Cavai makes five new hires in UK office

Preedy joins as global CRO and will lead the commercial team. He will focus on the UK market initially and then expand into other markets. He is responsible for the concept of conversational advertising to make ad spend more effective for marketers and the experience more compelling for consumers. Prior to joining Cavai, Preedy has acquired more than 20 years of experience in senior commercial roles including at GumGum, InMobi, Exponential and Global Radio.

Bjørne-Larsen comes on board as head of creative. He brings with him a background in both computer science and creative and will be working on every aspect of Cavai's creative campaign delivery and marketing. He previously worked at Norwegian advertising agency We Are Live and McCann, having studied artificial intelligence in Seoul.

Jones joins the team as a commercial director, following his 15 years’ worth of experience in the digital industry and extensive knowledge of brand and performance digital media. Until recently, he led programmatic platforms at Adform and headed up the programmatic team at Venatus media. In his new role, he will be tasked with working with media agencies and developing all partner opportunities, together with UK publishers and rich media specialists.

Seed has been brought in to Cavai as VP of Product. He will work with clients to deliver new products and solutions. Seed previously worked as a European lead solutions engineer at Triplelift and has held operations and technology roles at GumGum, PHD and Mindshare.

Smith has been engaged by Cavai as a PR Director, following 24 years of experience. Working with Cavai Management's direct team, Smith will implement a high visibility PR and communications strategy to increase the business' brand awareness. She has held major commercial roles at Associated Newspapers, The Mirror Group Newspapers, Dennis Publishing and IAB and currently provides consulting services for Impact, Appetite Creative, Channel Factory and The 614 Group.

The expansion of the team and the company is in response to the industry's increased demand to create conversational-style ads delivered in a chatbot-like experience on desktop and mobile.

Steffen Svartberg, Cavai's CEO, said: “Online advertising is at a crossroads with an all time low in attention and engagement between consumers and brands. To help stem the decline in brand spend in digital advertising, Cavai brings new ad tech to the market post-GDPR where creativity and user experience takes centre stage and delivers strong ROI and engagement. The appointment of Ed, Fabian, Dan, George and Julia demonstrates our commitment to launching into the UK market and beyond. We needed a senior team to work with clients to solve the problem of low engagement and to show them how they can generate high interaction rates and high dwell-times.“

[Pictured L-R: Ed Preedy, Dan Jones, Julia Smith and Fabian Bjørne-Larsen and George Seed]