Uber Hires Albertsons’ Kristi Argyilan to Lead Its Billion-Dollar Ad Business

Uber has a new global head of advertising in Kristi Argyilan, effective today.

The executive comes from Albertsons, where she led the grocer’s advertising business as senior vice president of retail media since July 2021.

After launch your advertising business in 2022, Uber announced in August that it was on track to reach $1 billion in advertising revenue in 2024. That meteoric growth, Argyilan said, is part of what has made working with Uber impossible to turn down.

“There is an opportunity to put a business structure in place to support something that has grown so quickly,” she explained. “[It’s] a great opportunity to strengthen what already exists.

Uber Advertising has been without a leader since May, when former vice president and general manager Mark Grether left the company to start a commercial media company in PayPal Announcementswhich was officially launched in October.

“We are thrilled to have Kristi join the Uber team, bringing decades of diverse experience in the advertising industry to help us build the next generation of our advertising business,” Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said in a press release.

Before taking the helm of Albertsons’ retail media network, Argyilan led Target’s advertising business for more than six years, including the creation of Roundel, Target’s advertising arm. But her early career was on the agency side: she spent seven years at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, five years at Hill Holliday and seven years combined at IPG agencies.

“The Uber offering is broader than a specific retailer’s retail media network, which makes it different,” Argyilan said. “As I will always say about commercial media, there is a big opening in the market for more alternatives. And Uber has every chance of being one of these large-scale alternatives.

Argyilan will report to Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, vice president of delivery at Uber, and will work closely with Andrew Macdonald, vice president of mobility and business operations. Megan Ramm, head of Americas for Uber Advertising, and Paul Wright, global head of Uber Advertising, will both report to Argyilan.