Home Online Advertising BlueKai Founder Omar Tawakol Parts Ways With Oracle, Datalogix’s Eric Roza Steps Up

BlueKai Founder Omar Tawakol Parts Ways With Oracle, Datalogix’s Eric Roza Steps Up

SHARE:

omar-leaves-oracleBlueKai co-founder and CEO Omar Tawakol will leave his post as general manager and SVP of Oracle Data Cloud on Friday, two and a half years after Oracle acquired his company.

Eric Roza, the former CEO of Datalogix and current co-SVP of Oracle Data Cloud, will step up to lead the group, according to Tawakol.

“I leave the ODC in great hands (four seasoned CEOs are in the ODC team led by Eric Roza the ex-CEO of Datalogix),” Tawakol wrote in a Facebook post.

Oracle would not immediately confirm the appointment to AdExchanger.

Sources tell AdExchanger Roza is the natural successor to lead Oracle Data Cloud.

Datalogix, because of its offline data, comprises the bulk of the power behind Oracle’s data-as-a-service offering. BlueKai’s data exchange and its data management platform were split, and the latter became part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud.

The relative importance of each company is also reflected in the purchase price. Oracle bought BlueKai for between $350 million and $400 million and purchased Datalogix for $1.2 billion.

Tawakol follows Kevin Akeroyd as the second major executive to leave his position heading up one of Oracle’s marketing product family.

Akeroyd served as SVP and GM of Oracle Marketing Cloud until August, when he left to become CEO of Cision. Marketing Cloud and Data Cloud were closely entwined, as the former housed the BlueKai data management platform (since renamed Oracle DMP).

Tawakol’s next post doesn’t seem to be in advertising. He will join the startup WorkFit on Monday, he said in a Facebook post. The company builds AI assistants for enterprise customers.

While both Datalogix and BlueKai served the ad tech and mar tech communities, Oracle has more expansive visions for Data Cloud, pushing its capabilities to other lines of business, like CRM and ERP.

Similarly, Akeroyd’s successor at Oracle Marketing Cloud, Laura Ipsen, indicated that the marketing stack would be used, in part, for Oracle to gain inroads in selling nonmarketing technologies.

Update: This story has been changed to remove references to the perception of BlueKai’s technology in the marketplace. We’ll address those issues in a Friday followup story, and will post the link here when that piece goes live. 

Must Read

AdExchanger's Big Story podcast with journalistic insights on advertising, marketing and ad tech

Google Had Its Day In Court. Now, It’s Amazon’s Turn

Google won’t have to break up its ads business after being declared an online monopolist. Meanwhile, Amazon faces a lawsuit from the FTC alleging that it charged advertisers more than necessary for ecommerce ads.

The FTC’s Amazon Lawsuit Is Ad Tech’s History Of Opacity Repeating Itself

Buy-side experts said it’s another example of a Big Tech platform taking advantage of the lack of transparency built into programmatic ad auctions. And they’re not optimistic change is coming.

How The Fin Tech Clearco Finances Ecommerce Startups (Without Losing Its Shirt)

This week, the Commerce Media Newsletter catches up with a startup from outside the world of data-driven advertising, but with an interesting position when it comes to ecommerce advertising. That’s Clearco, a Canadian fin tech company founded in 2015.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - APRIL 26: Halo Collar CMO Seth Solomons attends a Celebration to Shine a Light On Dog Safety With Halo Collar on April 26, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Halo Collar)

How Halo Collar Uses Data And Incrementality To Raise Both Awareness And Sales

Halo Collar, a dog collar brand with direct-to-consumer origins, is preparing for its retail expansion by honing its first-party data strategy and incrementality measurement.

tech family cartoon technology family

CartographAI Launched To Help Advertisers Pick The Right Tech Vendors. Now, It’s Helping Vendors Market Themselves, Too

The company is launching an accelerator program to help tech vendors pitch their solutions in a way that makes sense to advertisers.

Comic: Weather Bar

Neuroscience And AI Are Transforming The Weather Company’s Measurement Stack

TWC is building a monetization model that treats weather as both a contextual and an emotional signal, and it’s using AI sales agents to bring it to market.