Hiring for the Next Era of AdTech: Where AI Meets Commercial Strategy

12th Jun 2025

Over the past year, a surge of AI-native and AI-enhanced AdTech companies have entered the market, each pushing new boundaries. Whether it’s creative automation, predictive media buying, synthetic data, or next-gen measurement models, innovation is moving at pace.

And it’s not just noise.

According to IAB’s State of Data 2025: The Now, The Near, and The Next Evolution of AI for Media Campaigns, only 30% of agencies, brands and publishers have fully integrated AI into their media workflows, but more than half expect to by 2026. That inflection point is coming fast. The businesses that secure the right talent first will be the ones that lead.

From Tech to Traction: Why People Matter Most

As AI-powered platforms move from prototype to market-ready, they all encounter the same fundamental questions:

How do we communicate our product’s value to non-technical buyers?
Who exactly is our ideal customer, and how do we reach them?
What should we be looking for in our first commercial hire?
How do we structure and scale a GTM team that can adapt and grow?
Who has the ability to turn interest into meaningful adoption?

This isn’t about simply hiring for headcount. It’s about finding the people who can articulate complexity, inspire confidence, and ultimately drive commercial success.

Where Pivotal Comes In

We partner with the founders, CROs, and people leaders building the next generation of AI-powered AdTech. Our focus is laser-sharp: finding the commercial talent that can take breakthrough technology to market.

That includes:

First sales hires who can open doors with brands, agencies, or publishers
Customer success specialists who deepen trust and grow accounts
Growth marketers with an innate understanding of audience, funnel, and brand positioning
Commercial operators who build scalable, repeatable go-to-market engines

Whether it's designing your first hiring plan or scaling a fully-fledged GTM function, we act as both strategic advisor and recruitment partner. If you’re thinking about hiring, read more about our AI in AdTech recruitment services.

Why Clients Choose Pivotal

You’re post-MVP and ready to monetise but need people who can hit the ground running
You want access to top-tier candidates—not just those browsing job boards
You need talent with real-world experience selling into or operating within media and marketing environments
You want to move fast, but you won’t compromise on quality

AI Will Accelerate AdTech. People Will Unlock Its Potential.

Disruption often brings uncertainty. When programmatic advertising began its rise in the early 2000s, it wasn’t immediately clear how the ecosystem would evolve. But out of that disruption came opportunity, and thousands of careers that didn’t exist a decade prior.

We’re seeing that same inflection point today. AI is creating entirely new business models, and with them, entirely new roles. For founders and hiring managers, this means a rare opportunity to build something from the ground up, if you have the right people behind you.

If you're scaling a team in this space, we’d love to help – get in touch.