Hamburg, Germany, October 5th 2020: InfoSum, the world’s leading decentralised marketing infrastructure provider, today announced the appointment of Ulrich Hegge as SVP, Central Europe. Ulrich, widely known as Uli, has previously held several senior leadership positions including AppNexus, where he turned Central Europe into the fastest-growing region worldwide, and as CSO of comdirect bank AG spearheaded the shift to 100% programmatic digital marketing. As Managing Director at Gruner+Jahr and Burda he helped to develop Germany’s digital media landscape. Uli, co-founder and long-time CEO of wunderloop, drove a new privacy-focused approach to deliver marketing that earned the company the industry’s first European Privacy Seal (EuroPriSe).
In this new leadership role, Uli will oversee InfoSum’s operations in Central Europe where it is poised to support the growing need for a privacy-first solution to the delivery of people-based marketing and first-party addressability. As a member of the senior management team he will work closely with the product and engineering teams and form the strategic vision of InfoSum’s Central Europe activities.
Europe’s digital ecosystem is currently under threat by the dominance of the walled gardens. To date, alternative approaches have proven difficult and cumbersome due to the technical, legal and privacy challenges associated with the movement and commingling of data. With digital advertising spend in Germany forecast to grow by 8.6% in 2020*, brands and media owners must find new privacy-first ways to use their first-party data to power the media ecosystem, without funnelling more advertising spend to the walled gardens.
InfoSum has developed the world’s first decentralised marketing infrastructure that enables brands, media owners and enterprise companies to collaborate across first and second-party data sets, without sharing or centralising data. This privacy-by-design approach unlocks new data collaboration opportunities that can deliver superior first-party marketing programmes that never compromise the privacy of each party’s customers.
Uli commented on joining InfoSum:
InfoSum puts privacy at its technological and philosophical core with its federated approach to data collaboration. By removing the need for parties to share any data, we can fix the trust issues that exist within the current media landscape in Germany and other countries in Central Europe, ensuring each company retains full control of their customer data. This empowers brands, media owners and enterprise companies to leverage the full value of their data and more easily collaborate to create a media landscape that delivers scale, quality and privacy.
Brian Lesser, Executive Chairman InfoSum, added:
Central Europe has set an example for the rest of the world on how to protect the privacy of consumers. But in doing so, the walled gardens have been enabled to further dominate the marketing ecosystem in Europe. InfoSum’s privacy-first approach makes it possible for every company to unlock the full value of their customer data and collaborate more seamlessly with other data-centric companies to power high performing marketing campaigns that prioritise customer privacy.
Uli has been at the forefront of the effective use of customer data within the marketing industry and is a strong data privacy advocate, so he makes a fantastic addition to our global leadership team as we continue to accelerate our growth.
