GroupM has made two key senior appointments to GroupM Connect and plista as it continues its strategy of strengthening the group’s capabilities in digital media.

Renee Fittock joins GroupM Connect (formerly AgencyM) as general manager from her most recent post as head of trading and platforms at Yahoo!7 where she was overseeing the programmatic buying and selling operations, developing the media company’s performance solutions and managing technology partnerships.

GroupM Connect brings together the group’s digital biddable media operations, including search, social, mobile and our programmatic buying units.

Fittock said: “To establish an organisation like GroupM Connect in the Australian market is a really rare opportunity that could not be surpassed. In this diverse role, I am able to leverage my business management and performance marketing expertise, and scale an organisation of fun, bright and engaged specialists in online marketing, performance and biddable advertising. I am also really privileged to be able to work with and learn from GroupM’s leadership team.”

At plista, GroupM’s content distribution platform, Brett Poole takes on the role of general manager. Poole spent eight years at Yahoo!, most notably leading the Yahoo!7 Search business and broader platform, product and engineering efforts as platform director. His publisher-side experience is coupled with several years of startup and startup advisor experience.

Poole said: “Like elsewhere in the world, recommendations are becoming an increasingly attractive proposition for users, publishers and content creators alike. The plista platform is a very comprehensive and compelling offering having had great success in Europe, so I’m excited to be joining GroupM and plista to help grow the business here in Australia and NZ.”

GroupM head of digital John Miskelly added: “Renee and Brett represent the very best talent when it comes to the online and advertising technology industry. Recruiting leaders of this calibre demonstrates the group’s commitment to further strengthening our digital products and services for our clients. Both will add to our already strong digital leadership team across the agency management teams and Xaxis.”