• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 3, 2025

Stephen Yap, who has spent more than two decades at Google and led Google Marketing in the Americas, has left the Alphabet company to help steer and combine Perion Network's recently acquired brands Undertone and Hivestack.

At Google, Yap was responsible for developing, launching, and commercializing Google’s platforms business and led its sales and operations for more than seven years. He also founded Google’s data and measurement platforms business, starting with Google Analytics Premium.

During the seven years he led this business, Yap was responsible for global sales, business development, and commercializing Google Tag Manager, Audience Center, Data Studio, and attribution solutions. Yap also worked as a director of sales at DoubleClick and holds a B.A. in Psychology from Boston College. 

Perion CEO Tal Jacobson announced the news Monday in a letter to investors, clients, and employees that also detailed changes to unify the company's recent acquisitions and businesses. He called the strategy Perion One. 

The strategy also includes the appointment of Kenny Lau to chief product officer, Mina Naguib to chief technology officer, and Adi Shpak to lead the company's AI Labs.

The Perion One platform will build on Hivestack's technology to offer CMOs a solutions across the entire marketing funnel. It has been a bit over a year since Perion acquired HiveStack, which supports digital out-of-home (DOOH).

"This unification is not just a technological evolution," Jacobson wrote. "It’s an organizational transformation."

Jacobson believes technology companies have "fundamentally misunderstood" what advertisers really want. Advertisers really only care about one thing, he wrote, and that is reaching customers at the moment they are willing to make a purchase. That moment requires the perfect message, whether on connected television (CTV), across the open web, or on Meta, Google, TikTok, and Hulu. 

"Everything else is noise and waste," he wrote. 

The unified platform is expected to deliver improved customer retention, longer contracts, increased recurring revenue per customer, and a more efficient business structure.

Perion One will support advanced capabilities in programmatic with an AI-driven approach for DOOH, CTV, Open Web, and closed platforms like those offered by Meta.