YouGov Hires Product Chief

YouGov has appointed Marc Ryan as its Chief Product Officer (CPO), leading development of its audience intelligence, brand tracking and behavioural products.

The online research data and analytics technology group helps clients to plan, activate and track their marketing activities, and has offices in the UK, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, India and Asia Pacific. Its 'Living Data' platform draws on analysis of feedback from 26 million registered panel members worldwide, and feeds into offerings such as Profiles, BrandIndex and CategoryView. Six weeks ago the company's share price plunged after it issued a trading update warning of lower-than-expected sales and profits: Revenue forecast at £324-327m will still be massively increased but will fall well short of bullish statements made earlier this year, following major acquisitions. This week shares have begun an apparent rally, rising nearly 20% since yesterday morning.

Ryan, who joins on 3rd September and will report directly to CEO Steve Hatch, will work initially on YouGov's data products, with a focus on customer-centric innovation. More generally, his task is to set the firm's long-term product vision, including cross-product convergence. He brings more than 30 years' MR industry experience to the role, most recently from SCUBA Analytics where he was CPO, and before that at Kantar where he served both as Chief Data Officer and Chief Product and Technology Officer. He has also held senior positions at Nielsen.

Says Hatch: 'I'm thrilled to have someone of Marc's deep experience in data, research, product, AI and leadership join as YouGov's CPO. He has a proven track record of customer-centric innovation that delivers data products exceeding users' needs and expectations. It is an exciting time for the industry as advances in zero party data and AI see clients demanding more from their research. With YouGov's renowned data products and our unrivalled proprietary data set, we are already market-leading and with Marc's expertise we will continue to be the innovation leader in the industry'.

Web site: www.yougov.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.