Zefr Appoints New Senior Vice President EMEA
Zefr, the brand suitability in walled garden environments provider, has announced the appointment of Emma Lacey as Senior Vice President EMEA. Lacey brings over 15 years of experience in building successful commercial teams across the advertising industry. In her most recent role, Emma was part of the EMEA leadership team at OpenX, working as senior […]
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Emma Lacey, senior vice president, EMEA
Zefr, the brand suitability in walled garden environments provider, has announced the appointment of Emma Lacey as Senior Vice President EMEA.
Lacey brings over 15 years of experience in building successful commercial teams across the advertising industry.
In her most recent role, Emma was part of the EMEA leadership team at OpenX, working as senior director of buyer development to secure strategic partnerships with media agencies and brands. In addition, she has held senior positions within a range of media and ad tech businesses, including AOL, Sky and Blis.
“With the rapid evolution of the internet, and ever-changing consumer trends, many brands are still struggling to build sustainable safety and suitability strategies,” said Lacey. “One of the biggest hurdles faced by advertisers is that legacy technology designed for the open web proves ineffective in video advertising, which can mean limited reach and opaque insights. Being part of the Zefr team will allow me to work with brands to develop accurate and transparent strategies that are effective at scale within walled garden platforms.”
“A lack of consistency in definitions and standards across the industry has made it harder for brands to build and measure their suitability strategies. I hope to play a key role in communicating the importance of industry-wide standards, such as those set out by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), across the region. Only through widespread adoption of these standards will the advertising industry truly be able to put brands in control of their content adjacency.”
Emma will be tasked with bringing Zefr’s suite of pre-bid and post-bid targeting and measurement solutions for Facebook, YouTube, and most recently TikTok, to EMEA. Zefr’s Cognition AI engine combines audio, text, and video frame-by-frame analysis with scaled human review and moderation. Backed by years of video training data, Zefr’s machine learning approach goes far beyond just text and creator analysis, combining video-level analysis with scaled moderation specifically mapped to the GARM industry standards.
Zefr’s tech stack was built specifically for complex environments such as those within the walled gardens, as traditional approaches to brand safety in the open web, such as applying semantics and keywords, were insufficient for the highly dynamic and nuanced world of channels such as video.
“We’re incredibly pleased to welcome Emma to Zefr for our next era of EMEA growth,” said Rich Raddon, co-founder and co-CEO at Zefr. “Her appointment comes at a critical time where brands and agencies need more sophisticated and accurate partners for their walled garden investments. She will be instrumental in educating partnering brands on how to maintain safety and suitability on these powerful platforms.”
