Yieldmo Appoints CRO to Scale AI-Powered Ad Platform

Yieldmo reshuffled its executive team on May 27 with a batch of appointments and promotions. The headline move is Anthony Flaccavento coming in as Chief Revenue Officer, but the full picture includes a new VP of AI and Engineering and two internal promotions to Chief People Officer and Chief Experience Officer.

The changes are less about replacing anyone and more about building execution capacity. Yieldmo is placing significant bets on AI-driven advertising and sports media. This C-suite expansion looks designed to put the right people in place to run both.

A CRO With CTV Credentials

Flaccavento arrives with over 12 years of senior sales experience in digital advertising. Most recently he was General Manager at Ogury. Before that, he was CRO at Nexxen (formerly Tremor Video), where he helped scale its connected TV and multiscreen video business. During his tenure, Nexxen reported a 23% programmatic revenue increase in Q3 2023, with video making up 74% of programmatic revenue by Q2 2024.

His mandate at Yieldmo is to scale demand for Ymax.ai, the company's AI platform. The platform analyzes over 70 attention signals per ad impression in real time. In a documented case study with a major sports retailer, Ymax.ai delivered 91% incremental reach and 33% higher click-through rates versus baseline.

"I look forward to evolving advertising from a traditional cost center into a true revenue-driving engine for marketers and media partners alike," said Flaccavento.

The AI Engineering Hire Is the One to Watch

Sumeet Gala joins as VP of AI and Engineering with 17 years at Yahoo and Adobe, including time as Senior Manager of Search and Sensei. His work on Adobe's image search is directly relevant to Yieldmo's SportsMax product, which applies visual AI to sports advertising contexts.

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Yieldmo launched a dedicated sports business in August 2025 with predictive tools for brands, publishers, and rightsholders. Gala's appointment signals the company is now ready to accelerate the engineering behind those products, not just the commercial pitch.

The Market Context Making This Urgent

Digital ad revenue hit US$294.6 billion globally in 2025, growing nearly 14% year on year. Autonomous AI is projected to manage 78% of all programmatic ad spend by 2026. Platforms that can demonstrate real AI performance, not just claim it, are increasingly in a stronger negotiating position.

Yieldmo is not alone in this organizational push. Horizon Media hired three tech and product leaders to advance its proprietary AI platform. The pattern is consistent: companies are restructuring to put AI execution and revenue discipline at the top simultaneously.

For APAC markets specifically, the numbers are relevant. APAC digital ad spend is on track to reach US$311.4 billion by 2026, growing 14.1% annually. With 84% of APAC knowledge workers already using AI tools at work, regional buyers are increasingly sophisticated about what counts as real AI capability versus marketing language.

Yieldmo is a 150-person company growing 30% per year and ranking 14th in global ad exchange scale. The new hires round out a full executive team across revenue, people, product experience, and AI engineering. Whether that structure is enough to carve out a defensible position as walled gardens continue absorbing programmatic budget remains the open question. The appointments are Yieldmo's clearest answer yet on where it plans to compete.