While there are plenty of influential women in the mobile ad business, most of them have CEOs above them who are male. When women are mobile adtech CEOs, it tends to be at smaller companies they founded themselves.
So here is our ranking of the most powerful female executives in the mobile ad business.
First, we asked our readers to submit nominations. To ensure the nominations weren't self-serving, we also asked you to submit two nominations from other companies, rivals or colleagues. And we asked for revenue numbers in dollars, to gauge the size of the business these executives are in charge of.
This is not a complete list of every influential woman in mobile advertising, obviously. We chose the women with larger client bases, greater revenues (or spending), larger staffs and more innovative ideas than their peers.
You can see more details on our ranking methodology at the end of this list.
28. Kathy Leake, co-founder/CEO of LocalResponse
Leake co-founded LocalResponse with Nihal Mehta, the investor best known for his early funding of AdMob. Her profile rose this year because Mehta stepped aside as CEO to become executive chairman; at the same time it looks as if LocalResponse is looking to be acquired.
LocalResponse now has about 30 employees and has taken $8 million in funding.
LocalResponse's ingenious but simple offering: It's a mobile retargeting agency that serves location-based ads based on the content of your social media actions. If you tweet that you're hungry, you might next see a local pizza joint ad, for instance.
Twitter's recent big moves have been to open up its advertising API (to allow companies to place ads directly into the system) and to buy MoPub, an ad network and exchange. LocalResponse has not yet been named an Ads API partner. We'd love to see LocalResponse break out of that "interesting startup" phase and get to the next level.
27. Diana LaGattuta, vp/marketing at NativeX
NativeX, an app development/in-app advertising platform, has annual revenue in the "tens of millions," we're told. Its employee headcount is now 170, and it has taken $15 million in venture funding.
LaGuttata has a long history in mobile, having been a former global marketing director at Nokia and, as far back as 1995, a senior marketing manager at Cingular.
26. Polly Lieberman, vp/agency sales at Celtra
Lieberman again was referred to as a "rockstar" by her colleagues in the business.
Celtra offers AdCreator, a rich media ad production, delivery and analytics platform. This year it added mobile video analytics to the platform. The company also signed a deal with DDB Chicago to allow the agency to use AdCreator for its clients.
Celtra's other clients have included Nike, P&G and Paramount Pictures, and agencies/adtech companies Carat, Digitas, Hill Holliday, Isobar Mobile, Joule, MEC, Mindshare and Mobext.
Celtra says it became profitable in Q3 2012 with revenue growth of more than 300 percent. However, the company declines to disclose hard dollar numbers. We believe its net revenues are modest at this stage. The company has ~65 employees, and has plans to grow to 100 people after taking another $4 million in funding at the beginning of 2013.
Celtra has offices in Boston, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, London and Ljubljana.
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