Explore recruitment and executive search projects delivered by Ultimate Asset across Adtech, Martech, SaaS and Emerging Media.
From senior market-entry appointments to international leadership builds and rapid commercial team hiring, these case studies show how we approach searches across the UK & Europe, North America and Asia.
Scroll to explore the case studies ↓No two hiring challenges are exactly the same.
Some clients need one senior leader capable of opening a new market. Others need an entire commercial team built within months. Some searches are retained and confidential. Others require rapid contingent hiring across several roles.
This library brings together real examples of how those searches were structured, where the challenges sat and what was ultimately delivered.
Ultimate Asset became embedded with Hivestack's senior leadership team during a period of rapid international expansion, delivering VP Sales, Managing Director and Country Manager appointments across multiple global markets.
An exclusive hiring project to build a new Agency Sales function during Criteo's shift towards commerce and retail media, delivered in three months.
Retained search for a foundational Country Manager appointment, mapping senior leaders across the Japanese advertising technology ecosystem.
An exclusive search for a Head of Partnerships with broader experience across the creator, social and content economy.
Exclusive search for a founder-led creator agency's first MD, mapping senior leaders across creator, influencer and adjacent agencies.
An exclusive search for the experienced SaaS operator to take Kaizan from founder-led sales towards a repeatable commercial model.
A seven-week exclusive search for a senior marketing leader who could strengthen an established function and bring greater commercial accountability to growth.
Retained, research-led search for senior, confidential and market-critical appointments, from Country Managers and Managing Directors to VP and C-suite hires and international market entry.
Explore Executive Search →Success-based recruitment for specialist commercial and GTM hiring, spanning commercial team builds, sales, marketing, customer success and specialist growth roles.
Explore Contingent Search →Dedicated recruitment support for new team builds, international expansion and multiple related hires running under one coordinated programme.
Talk to us about a project →Commercial, programmatic, client services, marketing and leadership recruitment across the wider advertising technology ecosystem.
Explore Adtech recruitment →Sales, marketing, partnerships, customer success and leadership for marketing technology businesses.
Explore Martech recruitment →Commercial and GTM recruitment for B2B software businesses, from growth-stage teams to international platforms.
Explore SaaS recruitment →Commercial and leadership talent across creator, influencer, social, gaming, retail media and new media platforms.
Explore Emerging Media recruitment →23 senior placements. 15 markets. Seven months. One embedded international search partnership.
Hivestack was building a global programmatic digital out-of-home business at pace.
The technology had international potential, but turning that opportunity into a global company meant establishing credible leadership and commercial teams in market after market.
That expansion accelerated significantly through 2020 and 2021.
Ultimate Asset was selected following a global pitch to support that growth.
Many of the searches were taking place before Hivestack had an established local team, employer brand or significant presence in the market.
That meant the hiring challenge went well beyond matching somebody to a job description.
The business needed senior people capable of opening markets, creating relationships, building revenue and representing Hivestack locally.
Roles ranged from VP Sales level through to Managing Directors and Country Managers. And they were being hired across very different talent markets.
The scale and speed of the project required a different way of working.
Ultimate Asset's founders became embedded operationally with Hivestack's leadership team, working closely with the CEO, CRO, COO and CPO.
Rather than briefing individual roles and returning with CVs, we operated much more like an extension of the business. That included helping shape briefs, sense-check compensation, provide competitor intelligence, map the relevant market and advise on where the strongest talent was likely to come from.
Commercially, the partnership was structured around a monthly retainer alongside a reduced success fee. That gave Hivestack dedicated international search capacity while allowing both teams to work across multiple markets at once.
The hiring programme covered:
Each market required a different search strategy. Compensation varied. Candidate expectations varied. Competitor sets changed. The maturity of the local programmatic and DOOH ecosystem differed considerably.
The common requirement was senior commercial talent capable of building. So the search could not simply be replicated from one country to the next.
Much of the project happened during COVID. International travel was heavily restricted, face-to-face interviewing was limited and many candidates were understandably cautious about moving businesses during an uncertain period.
At the same time, Hivestack was continuing to expand.
The search therefore relied heavily on direct market mapping, passive candidate engagement and constant communication between Ultimate Asset and Hivestack's senior leadership team.
We provided feedback from each market as the searches developed, including candidate availability, compensation expectations, competitor activity and where the original brief needed adjusting. That allowed hiring decisions to keep moving despite the wider environment.
Across the project, Ultimate Asset delivered 23 senior placements across 15 international markets in seven months.
The appointments were predominantly VP Sales level and above and included Managing Directors and Country Managers responsible for establishing and scaling Hivestack's presence locally.
It was not simply a volume hiring project. Each appointment had the potential to shape the performance of an entire market.
The initial global expansion project developed into a broader relationship. Ultimate Asset continued supporting Hivestack with contingent hiring across EMEA and APAC after the core programme had been delivered.
That continuation mattered because by then we understood the business, its proposition, the leadership team and the type of people who succeeded inside the company. The search partnership had moved from individual vacancies to genuine market context.
Hivestack continued its international expansion and its platform was ultimately deployed across more than 30 countries.
In December 2023, Hivestack was acquired by Perion Network.
The acquisition came several years after the search programme, so it would be wrong to attribute that outcome to recruitment alone. But the international leadership structure built during Hivestack's expansion formed part of the business that went on to scale globally.
International expansion is often described in terms of countries, offices and revenue targets. In reality, much of it comes down to people.
A company can identify an attractive market, build a commercial plan and invest in technology, but without the right person leading locally, expansion can remain theoretical.
The strongest international searches therefore require more than access to candidates. They require an understanding of how the talent market changes from country to country, which backgrounds genuinely transfer and what it takes to persuade established senior people to join a business that may still be relatively unknown locally.
For businesses expanding internationally, that can be the difference between opening a market on paper and actually building a business there.
Ultimate Asset helps Adtech and technology businesses identify senior commercial and leadership talent across the UK & Europe, North America and Asia. From first market-entry hires to multi-country leadership builds, we support businesses that need to understand the market as well as recruit from it.
12 specialist sales hires. Two European hubs. Three months. One completely new proposition to take to market.
Criteo was going through an important evolution.
The business had long been known for performance advertising and retargeting, but the wider market was changing quickly. Retailers were beginning to recognise the value of their first-party data and digital inventory, while brands were looking for new ways to reach customers closer to the point of purchase.
Commerce and retail media were becoming a much bigger part of the conversation. For Criteo, that created an opportunity to take a broader proposition to agencies and advertisers. It also created a recruitment challenge.
Criteo needed to build an Agency Sales team capable of taking that evolving proposition to market. The requirement was not simply for experienced Adtech sellers.
The people joining needed to understand agencies, communicate a relatively new commercial proposition and build credibility with clients who were themselves still working out how retail and commerce media fitted into their plans.
The team needed to be built across London and Barcelona, and quickly. Criteo was not hiring one person and waiting to see how they performed. It needed an entire group of commercial people entering the business within the same period.
Ultimate Asset was appointed on an exclusive basis to run the search. The project involved 12 Agency Sales hires across two European hubs, with multiple searches running concurrently.
That meant the relationship needed to work differently from a standard vacancy-by-vacancy recruitment process. We owned the search activity end to end and maintained regular communication with Criteo's Talent team and senior commercial leadership, including weekly discussions around pipeline, feedback and what we were seeing in the market.
The objective was simple: build the team without allowing quality to fall as the volume increased.
Before approaching candidates, we needed to understand what they would actually be joining to sell. That mattered because the opportunity could not be positioned as simply another Agency Sales role within Adtech.
Criteo's proposition was changing. Candidates needed to understand the move towards commerce and retail media, why that market was developing and what the opportunity could mean for their own careers. That understanding shaped both the search strategy and the way we approached the market.
London and Barcelona had different talent pools, compensation expectations and levels of relevant experience. Rather than treating them as identical searches, we mapped each market independently while maintaining one overall project structure.
That allowed us to identify where direct experience existed, where adjacent backgrounds could transfer and where the brief needed to remain flexible.
Multiple candidates were moving through interview processes at the same time, so coordination became as important as sourcing. Feedback needed to move quickly. Candidate expectations needed to be managed. And Criteo needed a clear view of the overall hiring pipeline rather than 12 separate recruitment processes.
Because commerce media was still developing as a category, requiring every candidate to already have direct retail media experience would have unnecessarily restricted the market.
The search therefore focused on transferable commercial capability. Relevant candidates could come from Adtech, programmatic, agency sales or adjacent digital advertising environments if they understood agency relationships and could sell a developing proposition. That widened the talent pool while keeping the underlying commercial standard high.
Multi-hire projects can easily become a numbers exercise. This one could not. Criteo needed 12 people, but each person still had to be capable of representing a changing proposition credibly in front of agencies.
Running the project exclusively gave us the ability to coordinate the market properly rather than sending candidates into a fragmented process. Weekly communication with the client meant issues were addressed quickly, interview feedback stayed current and the search could adjust as the team began to take shape.
Ultimate Asset delivered 12 Agency Sales appointments across London and Barcelona within three months. The project gave Criteo the commercial capacity it needed during an important stage in the evolution of its proposition.
For Ultimate Asset, the significance of the project was not simply the number of hires. It was the combination of speed, multiple concurrent searches and the need to recruit people into a proposition that was still relatively new to much of the market.
This was a search shaped by where the industry was heading. Retail and commerce media were becoming more important, but the mature candidate pool that exists around the category today had not yet fully formed.
That meant recruitment could not rely on searching for people who had already done exactly the same job somewhere else. Instead, the project required an understanding of adjacent talent markets and which commercial skills would transfer successfully into the new proposition.
New products create unusual recruitment problems. Businesses naturally want people with direct experience, but when a category is developing quickly, those people may barely exist. The better question is often: which experience actually matters, and which parts can be learned?
In Criteo's case, strong agency relationships, Adtech knowledge and commercial credibility could be more valuable than having exactly the right terminology on a CV.
That distinction opened up the market and allowed the team to be built at the pace the business required.
Ultimate Asset helps Adtech, Martech, SaaS and Emerging Media businesses identify the commercial talent capable of taking new propositions to market. Whether you're building a new function, entering a different category or scaling an existing commercial team, we can help you understand where the relevant talent sits and how to reach it.
A founder-led creator agency. A small senior talent pool. Andy Jephson appointed within six weeks.
Ultimate Asset’s Hussain worked directly with Anda on the search for Saku Agency’s first Managing Director.
The brief was commercially focused.
Saku Agency needed someone who could help strengthen new business capability, expand its senior brand and marketing network and bring greater commercial rigour to pricing, margin and scope.
But the role went much further than sales.
The successful person also needed to manage senior client relationships, create accountability within the team and introduce more process without removing the entrepreneurial pace that had helped Saku Agency grow in the first place.
That combination made the search unusually specific.
The core requirements included:
The final point was particularly important.
A candidate could look excellent on paper and still be wrong for the environment.
The relevant senior talent pool was relatively small.
Many of the strongest potential candidates had spent significant parts of their careers within larger agency groups or highly structured businesses.
Saku Agency offered something different.
It was smaller, still scaling and founder-led.
Joining meant accepting more ambiguity, more direct accountability and more personal exposure to the growth of the business.
That required a degree of appetite for risk that not every senior agency leader wanted.
Founder chemistry also mattered heavily.
For a first Managing Director appointment, experience alone was never going to be enough.
Anda needed somebody she could trust to help shape the next phase of the agency.
The search was not restricted to people already running creator or influencer agencies.
Ultimate Asset also mapped adjacent agencies where senior leaders had the commercial, cultural and client experience that could transfer into Saku Agency.
The question was not:
Who has already been an MD of an influencer agency?
It was:
Who has the commercial judgement, network and leadership experience to help this particular agency grow?
That distinction materially widened the search while keeping the quality bar high.
Ultimate Asset ran the assignment on an exclusive contingent basis.
Hussain mapped and approached a tightly defined group of senior candidates, including passive leaders who were not actively looking for a move.
The shortlist remained deliberately small.
This was a senior appointment where fit mattered more than volume, and the process was highly competitive despite the limited number of candidates progressing.
Andy Jephson was approached directly as part of the headhunt.
Andy brought a background that aligned closely with what Saku Agency needed next.
His career included senior leadership at Exposure, a larger independent marketing agency focused on connecting brands with culture.
More importantly for this search, he had experience helping establish an agency as a strategic, multi-channel and culturally led communications partner.
That combination of commercial leadership, senior brand relationships and cultural marketing experience differentiated him from the wider market.
He did not simply match the job title.
He matched the direction Saku Agency wanted to move in.
Within six weeks, Saku Agency appointed Andy Jephson as Managing Director.
The search delivered the agency’s first MD and added a senior commercial capability alongside its founder-led leadership.
Andy’s remit is focused on helping Saku Agency continue its growth, expand its market presence and strengthen its commercial competitiveness.
As with any recent appointment, those are the objectives of the role rather than outcomes we would claim have already been achieved.
First Managing Director hires are rarely straightforward.
For founder-led businesses, the appointment changes more than an organisational chart.
The person needs enough experience to add structure and commercial discipline, but not so much dependence on established processes that they struggle in a smaller entrepreneurial environment.
They also need the credibility to challenge the founder while building enough trust to work closely alongside them.
That makes chemistry, judgement and appetite for the stage of business just as important as sector experience.
Ultimate Asset perspective
The strongest candidate for a scaling creator business will not always come from another creator agency.
As emerging sectors mature, the available talent pool often becomes stronger when adjacent experience is considered properly.
The key is understanding which experience needs to be exact and which experience can transfer.
For Saku Agency, direct creator-economy understanding mattered.
But so did broader commercial leadership, senior brand relationships, cultural credibility and experience helping shape a more strategic agency proposition.
That is where the eventual fit came from.
Ultimate Asset helps businesses across Emerging Media, Adtech, Martech and SaaS hire senior commercial and leadership talent.
From first Managing Directors to market-entry leaders and broader executive appointments, we help define the brief, map the right market and engage senior people who may not be actively looking.
High Performance had built one of the UK’s most recognisable podcast and content brands. Following the departure of its previous Head of Sales, the business had an opportunity to rethink what it needed from its senior commercial hire.
Rather than simply replacing like-for-like, High Performance wanted a leader with broader experience across the creator, social and content economy. Someone who could take ownership of revenue, develop the commercial proposition and build the team around the next stage of the business.
Ultimate Asset was engaged on an exclusive search to find that person.
Podcasting has grown considerably, but the pool of senior commercial leaders who have genuinely operated within podcasting, creator media and social-first content remains relatively small.
High Performance wasn’t looking for a conventional media salesperson.
The brief required someone who could combine commercial leadership with a strong understanding of how modern content businesses generate revenue. They needed to understand partnerships, branded content, agencies and direct advertisers, while also being capable of building and managing a commercial team.
The departure of the previous Head of Sales created an opportunity to reset the role around those broader requirements.
The new Head of Partnerships would ultimately own the commercial number and be accountable for growing revenue across the business.
Three areas were particularly important:
That combination narrowed the market considerably.
Ultimate Asset’s Emerging Media team mapped senior commercial talent across the content, social and creator economy rather than restricting the search to candidates already working directly in podcasting.
The focus was on people who understood how to turn an engaged audience into sustainable commercial partnerships and who had operated with genuine revenue and leadership accountability.
Five candidates made the final shortlist.
The successful candidate was identified through direct headhunting and brought a particularly relevant combination of commercial, content and audience experience.
In their previous role, they held full P&L responsibility across branded content, display and social revenues while also overseeing content strategy and social growth across an international audience of more than 15 million.
They had led senior commercial and content functions, developed agency and direct-client relationships, built branded content and sponsorship partnerships and helped grow a sizeable multi-platform community.
Crucially, their experience connected the two sides of the High Performance opportunity: building audience value and turning that value into commercial growth.
High Performance appointed its new Head of Partnerships within five weeks of the search beginning.
The appointment gave the business a senior commercial leader responsible for the revenue number, partnerships strategy and continued development of the commercial team.
Following the appointment, the Head of Partnerships went on to add Partnerships Sales Directors into the function, beginning the next stage of building out High Performance’s commercial capability.
The key was not treating the brief as a straightforward replacement for the previous Head of Sales.
High Performance used the change as an opportunity to reconsider the type of commercial leader the business needed next.
By widening the search into adjacent parts of the creator, content and social media ecosystem, Ultimate Asset was able to identify leaders with the commercial experience, audience understanding and team-building capability required for a modern media brand.
Ultimate Asset perspective
The strongest commercial leaders in Emerging Media increasingly sit at the intersection of audience, content and revenue.
For podcast, creator and social-first businesses, that often means looking beyond traditional media sales backgrounds. The people who can drive the next phase of growth understand how audience strength translates into partnerships, how content creates commercial value and how to build the team and proposition required to scale it.
High Performance’s search was a good example of why replacing a departing commercial leader like-for-like is not always the right answer.
Sometimes it is the right moment to redefine the role completely.
Ultimate Asset helps businesses across Emerging Media, Adtech, Martech and SaaS hire senior commercial and leadership talent.
An exclusive search for the experienced SaaS operator to take Kaizan from founder-led sales towards a repeatable commercial model.
Kaizan is an AI SaaS business building technology designed to help client-facing teams understand relationships, identify opportunities and improve the way they manage and grow accounts.
The company had reached an important stage in its development.
Sales had previously been founder-led, but with a funding round approaching and ambitions to accelerate growth, the commercial model needed to evolve.
The next step was not simply hiring another salesperson.
Kaizan needed someone capable of building the sales function itself.
Founder-led selling can be highly effective in the early stages of a SaaS business.
The founders understand the product, the customer problem and the vision better than anyone else.
But it becomes difficult to scale indefinitely.
Kaizan needed its first VP Sales to begin turning that early commercial traction into a more structured and repeatable GTM engine.
The role would help shape commercial strategy, continue winning business directly and ultimately build a mid-market sales and SDR organisation underneath them.
That required a very particular type of operator.
Glen Calvert, Kaizan’s CEO and Founder, briefed Ultimate Asset directly on the search.
The core requirements were:
Kaizan was not looking for somebody who had only managed an established sales organisation.
They needed someone who understood what it took to create one.
This created an interesting tension within the search.
Kaizan was a bootstrapped business moving into its seed-funded phase, but the role required an experienced commercial operator.
Many senior SaaS sales leaders build their careers within businesses where considerable infrastructure already exists around them.
Sales development teams are established. Processes are documented. Enablement exists. Marketing generates demand. CRM workflows are mature.
Kaizan needed somebody comfortable without all of that.
The successful candidate needed the experience of a senior sales leader but the mentality of an early-stage builder.
That significantly narrowed the relevant market.
Ultimate Asset’s SaaS division, led on the search by Swaran Sandhu, ran the project on an exclusive basis.
The search focused on senior SaaS sales leaders who had experienced comparable stages of growth and understood the difference between inheriting a sales engine and building one.
The market was mapped directly and candidates were approached through targeted headhunting rather than relying on active applicants.
Around 12 serious candidates progressed into the shortlist.
The successful candidate was directly headhunted.
Ultimately, the appointment came back to the original reason Kaizan had opened the role.
They needed someone capable of moving the business beyond founder-led sales.
The successful candidate demonstrated the combination of SaaS sales credibility, process orientation, commercial judgement and hands-on operating experience required to do exactly that.
Rather than fitting only one element of the brief, they addressed the broader commercial problem the hire was intended to solve.
That distinction became particularly important at VP level.
Within two months, Kaizan appointed its first VP Sales.
The role now has three clear priorities:
These are the objectives of the appointment rather than outcomes Ultimate Asset would claim have already been delivered.
The first senior sales hire is one of the most consequential commercial appointments an early-stage SaaS business can make.
Hire too early and the infrastructure may not exist for them to succeed.
Hire someone accustomed only to mature organisations and they may struggle without established process and support.
Hire purely for individual sales performance and the business may gain a strong seller without gaining a scalable sales function.
The requirement is usually somewhere between all three.
For Kaizan, the challenge was finding somebody senior enough to shape commercial strategy while remaining hands-on enough to help build the engine underneath it.
Ultimate Asset perspective
Hiring the first VP Sales requires a different search from replacing an existing sales leader.
There is no established function to inherit.
The successful person often has to sell, build, recruit, introduce process and work closely with founders at the same time.
That means the strongest CV on paper is not always the strongest fit.
Stage experience matters.
A candidate who understands what a scaled sales organisation looks like is useful. A candidate who understands how to get there from where the business is today can be considerably more valuable.
That was the distinction at the centre of the Kaizan search.
Ultimate Asset’s SaaS team helps growth-stage technology businesses hire the commercial leaders required to build their next stage of growth.
From first VP Sales appointments to demand generation, marketing and broader GTM team builds, we help businesses define the brief, understand the available market and engage experienced operators who may not be actively looking.
A seven-week exclusive search for a senior marketing leader who could strengthen an established function and bring greater commercial accountability to growth.
Log my Care is a SaaS business serving the social care sector, helping care providers manage information, evidence and processes across residential care, home care and other care environments.
The business already had an established marketing function and a significant amount of activity in place.
The challenge was not to rebuild marketing from scratch.
It was to take what was already working, strengthen the team and make marketing more directly accountable for commercial growth.
Ultimate Asset was briefed to find a new Head of Marketing at a point when the business wanted to sharpen the commercial role of marketing.
The existing team had already built strong foundations across campaigns, events and lead generation.
The next stage required a different emphasis.
Marketing needed to be more closely connected to pipeline, revenue and the wider commercial objectives of the business.
That meant looking beyond somebody who could simply manage activity.
Log my Care needed a senior marketer capable of running the function.
The role required someone who could combine commercial thinking with strong people leadership.
They needed to understand what was already working, identify where performance could be improved and bring new ideas without creating unnecessary disruption.
The successful person needed to be able to:
Cultural fit also mattered.
The business wanted somebody with the judgement, values and leadership style to build on what was already there rather than arrive with the assumption that everything needed to change.
The brief created a relatively specific talent pool.
There are many marketers who can demonstrate campaign delivery, lead generation or channel expertise.
There are fewer who combine those skills with genuine commercial judgement, people leadership and the confidence to run a broad marketing function.
At Head of Marketing level, the search therefore had to go beyond individual channels.
Candidates needed to show they could understand the wider business problem, prioritise effectively and make decisions around where marketing should focus.
The ability to stand behind those decisions also mattered.
Ultimate Asset ran the assignment on an exclusive contingent basis, led by our Managing Director.
The search focused on senior marketing leaders with relevant SaaS, technology and adjacent sector experience.
However, sector background alone was not enough.
Candidates were assessed on their ability to:
The appointed candidate was directly headhunted.
Eight candidates formed the serious shortlist, with two progressing as finalists.
From brief to accepted offer, the process took seven weeks.
The successful candidate differentiated themselves through the way they understood the brief.
They recognised the strengths already within the business, the commercial challenge marketing needed to address and what would be required to move the function forward.
Rather than approaching the opportunity with a fixed playbook, they demonstrated the judgement to understand what should remain, what could improve and where new thinking would add value.
They also built a strong relationship with the business throughout the process.
That mattered.
This was a role that required somebody capable of understanding what the leadership team needed, challenging where appropriate and then executing against it.
Their experience across health and SaaS environments was relevant, but equally important were their people leadership, commercial mindset and approach to building teams.
Log my Care appointed its new Head of Marketing following the seven-week search.
The remit was broad.
The objective was evolution rather than wholesale reinvention.
One of the easiest mistakes businesses can make when hiring a new marketing leader is assuming that change automatically means starting again.
Sometimes the more difficult brief is finding someone capable of recognising what is already good.
That requires a particular type of leader.
They need enough confidence to make changes, but enough judgement not to create disruption for its own sake.
They need to understand brand, demand and execution, while also recognising that senior marketing leadership increasingly carries commercial accountability.
For Log my Care, the requirement sat precisely at that intersection.
Ultimate Asset perspective
The strongest marketing leaders are rarely defined by one channel.
At Head of Marketing level, the job increasingly becomes one of judgement.
And how does all of that contribute to the commercial direction of the business?
That is why senior marketing searches need to assess more than technical capability.
People leadership, commercial thinking, cultural alignment and the ability to build trust with the wider leadership team can be just as important as the campaigns somebody has run before.
That was at the centre of the Log my Care search.
Ultimate Asset helps SaaS and technology businesses hire senior marketing and GTM talent.
From Heads of Marketing and Demand Generation leaders to broader commercial leadership appointments, we help businesses define what they actually need, understand the available market and engage senior candidates who may not be actively looking.
When Vistar Media decided to establish its presence in Japan, the first hire was always going to matter. This was not simply about recruiting a senior salesperson. They needed someone capable of representing the business in-market, building credibility from day one and laying the foundations for future growth.
Ultimate Asset was retained to find that person.
Vistar Media is a global technology company specialising in digital out-of-home advertising.
As the business continued its international expansion, Japan represented an important new market. But entering it successfully required more than simply transferring an existing commercial model into a new region.
The business needed local leadership.
The brief from Ben Baker, Managing Director APAC, was clear: launch Japan.
The Country Manager would be a foundational appointment, responsible for establishing Vistar Media locally and building the relationships, credibility and commercial momentum needed to develop the market.
That created a relatively narrow candidate pool. The right person needed senior experience within digital advertising or Adtech, strong knowledge of the Japanese market and the ability to operate effectively within an international technology business.
Direct digital out-of-home experience was not essential. Finding someone with the right leadership qualities, commercial network and market reputation mattered more.
Rather than limiting the search to people already working directly within DOOH, we mapped the broader Japanese advertising technology ecosystem. That included senior leaders across platforms, DSPs, SSPs, publishers and adjacent technology businesses.
The focus was on identifying people with:
This broadened the available talent pool without weakening the brief.
At this level, the strongest candidates were unlikely to be actively looking. This was therefore a genuinely passive Executive Search.
The work centred on understanding the market, identifying the people with the right profile and then creating enough interest in the opportunity for them to consider leaving established positions.
Reputation also mattered heavily. For a foundational market-entry appointment, Vistar Media needed someone customers, partners and the wider industry would immediately take seriously.
Ultimate Asset ran a targeted retained search across the Japanese Adtech market. We mapped relevant businesses and senior leaders, assessed adjacent backgrounds and approached candidates directly.
The qualification process focused not only on commercial experience, but also on market standing, relationships, leadership style and whether each individual could realistically build Vistar Media's presence from the ground up.
Throughout the process we worked closely with Ben and the wider Vistar Media leadership team, helping calibrate the brief as market feedback developed and managing the search through interview and offer.
The search resulted in the appointment of Yosuke Maekawa as Country Manager, Japan.
Yosuke brought senior experience from the advertising technology ecosystem, strong local market relationships and the credibility required for a launch of this importance. His background gave Vistar Media someone capable of representing the company immediately while also building the longer-term commercial foundations of the Japanese business.
Vistar Media secured the senior leader it needed to establish the business in Japan.
More importantly, the search demonstrated why international market-entry appointments require a broader approach than simply looking for someone who has performed the same job before. The strongest answer came from understanding the ecosystem around the role and identifying the person whose experience, reputation and relationships best matched what the business needed to achieve.
International expansion often starts with one critical appointment. That first leader has to understand the local market, represent the business credibly and create the platform for everything that follows.
Ultimate Asset perspective
Our role in searches like this is to look beyond obvious job-title matches and identify the senior people capable of making that market entry work.
We help Adtech and technology businesses identify senior leaders for market-entry, commercial and executive appointments across the UK & Europe, North America and Asia.
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