Hightouch has appointed Jitendra Kumar as Head of Commercial, Advertising, as the data and AI company looks to expand its presence across the advertising ecosystem and increase adoption of its agentic marketing technology among agencies and brands.
Kumar joins Hightouch after spending 20 years at Google, where he held leadership positions across the company's advertising business. Most recently, he led Google's U.S. agency partnerships, working with major agencies and advertisers through changes in digital advertising, media and technology.
In his new role, Kumar will focus on expanding Hightouch's relationships with advertising agencies, brands and technology platforms. His mandate will include working with holding companies and independent agencies to increase the use of first-party data and AI across media workflows. He will also support adoption of Hightouch's advertising products, including Ad Studio.
The appointment comes as Hightouch expands its Agentic Marketing Platform, which combines customer data, brand context and marketing orchestration to allow AI agents to support marketing activities across advertising, email, SMS and web channels. The company is positioning the platform around helping marketing teams use AI agents for tasks ranging from identifying opportunities and developing creative to executing campaigns.
The move follows a period of growth for Hightouch. Earlier this year, the company raised $150 million in Series D funding at a valuation of $2.75 billion. Hightouch said it has recorded growth of more than 100% in each of the past two years as it invests in expanding its AI-led marketing capabilities.
Kumar said his experience at Google showed him the challenges agencies and marketers face around signal loss, fragmented execution and expanding technology stacks. He said agentic marketing could provide businesses with new ways to use first-party data and contextual information across advertising operations.
Tejas Manohar, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Hightouch, said Kumar's experience working with large marketers and agencies would support the company's advertising ambitions as AI changes how marketing teams operate. He added that the opportunity extends beyond automating existing workflows towards finding new ways to turn data, strategy and creative inputs into action.
Hightouch has been expanding its advertising offering alongside its customer data business. In April, the company launched Ad Studio, an AI agent-based product designed to bring analysis, ideation, content creation and execution into a single performance marketing workflow.
Kumar's appointment gives Hightouch an advertising executive with experience across agency and platform relationships as the company looks to commercialise its agentic marketing capabilities across brands, agencies and the wider advertising ecosystem.
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