Stuart Simms Appointed Rakuten Marketing CEO

Our most recent President, Stuart Simms, has now been appointed as the Rakuten Marketing Chief Executive Officer. We couldn’t be more ecstatic to be having such an innovative, thoughtful retail tech veteran leading our company through its next phase of growth. Stuart will dedicate his time and efforts in advancing the state of online advertising in ways that make it more compelling, tailored and inspiring for consumers – and more profitable for brands. He will also invest in areas like artificial intelligence and machine learning that help predict consumers’ needs, interests and preferences.

Our previous CEO, Tony Zito, who will now be taking on a new role in the Rakuten business, stated “There couldn’t be a better time to appoint someone like Stuart to this important leadership role,” stated Tony Zito. “He is an impressive talent and, given our newest technology focus on artificial intelligence, Rakuten Marketing now has a tremendous opportunity to realise its vision when it comes to advancing and improving consumer advertising.”

Stuart is a very experienced executive with proven expertise in building and leading high-growth, global digital commerce, SaaS and cloud-services organisations. Before Rakuten Marketing, Stuart held numerous executive leadership positions at major multi-national organisations. He was CEO of Rakuten Fits Me, served as GM for Venda (sold to Netsuite), and was GM at Rackspace where he ran the highly acclaimed European Cloud Services business. Other previous senior leadership roles have included responsibility for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications business across the Middle East and Africa.

As President of Rakuten Marketing, Stuart successfully enhanced the company’s corporate structure to further align Rakuten Marketing’s product, technology and services divisions. Since this appointment, Stuart has recognised a new client increase of over 16% over the last year. This success reflects his commitment to positioning the organisation for accelerated growth that we know will continue in his role as Rakuten Marketing CEO.

“We are committed to leveraging the latest in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, along with Rakuten’s massive data assets, to deliver ad experiences that people love, and ads that enable our brands to profit. I’m truly excited to make this promise a reality.” – Stuart Simms