- Amazon Ads has hired Kelly MacLean as its VP of its ad buying platform.
- Amazon’s ad buying platform lets advertisers buy ads on Amazon-owned platforms and other sites.
- MacLean, who joined Amazon late last month, previously spent more than 11 years at Meta.
Amazon Ads has poached a longtime Meta executive to lead a key adtech division, Insider has learned.
Kelly MacLean joined Amazon late last month as vice president of DSP, which refers to Amazon’s demand-side platform, the company confirmed. The Amazon DSP uses automation to let advertisers buy ads on Amazon properties like Amazon.com, Twitch, and IMDb, as well as elsewhere on the web.
The DSP is an important piece of software in Amazon’s growing advertising business, which topped $37 billion in revenue last year. It competes with the likes of Google, Microsoft-owned Xandr, and The Trade Desk.
The Amazon DSP recently underwent an overhaul that was 18 months in the making to improve its machine-learning and predictive algorithms. More upgrades are also in the works, the company has said.
MacLean will play a key role in explaining these new offerings to large agency groups and nonendemic advertisers — or advertisers who don’t sell products on Amazon — two sources familiar with the matter said.
MacLean reports into Colleen Aubrey, SVP of advertising products and tech. She effectively replaces the hole filled by the departures of Matt Battles, former VP of multichannel advertising, who left in March, and Sam Cox, previously a director of product management for the Amazon DSP, who left the company last month.
“Kelly has spent 20 years leading and supporting teams that build science-driven products and technology to help brands of all sizes operate smartly and effectively,” said an Amazon spokesperson in a statement. “Advanced science is at the heart of Amazon DSP, and we’ll continue inventing on behalf of brands so they can more easily maximize the reach and performance of their ad spends.”
MacLean had spent more than 11 years at Meta before joining Amazon. Most recently she held the role of Meta’s VP of business products engineering, where she specialized in ads, enterprise, and other business-to-business products.
Before Meta, MacLean had worked at director of product management and marketing ad the adtech firm Flite, which was acquired by Snap, and had held roles at the data company LiveRamp and computer giant Dell. MacLean is also a former professional soccer player who played for the Canadian national team and the Vancouver Whitecaps.
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