Billy Kinchin, a former senior executive at Google, has been appointed as the Chief Product Officer at Melbourne-based adtech startup, Vudoo.

Kinchin brings over 15 years of experience from Google, where he held strategic engineering and product roles across the UK and APAC regions. Prior to joining Vudoo, Kinchin served as the head of APAC at Oovvuu, a publishing technology scale-up.

In his new role, Kinchin will be responsible for aligning Vudoo's offerings with the evolving needs of the advertising technology and e-commerce space, ensuring Vudoo's solutions provide high value and relevance to its global clients. Vudoo has partnerships with publishers including News Corp, Are Media and New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME). Its global clients include Forever New, S&P Global and Kohler, and the company has facilitated campaigns for brands like Hilton, Samsung, Moët & Chandon, Burberry, Dyson, Lexus, Hotel Clicquot and Sunday Riley.

"Billy's extensive product experience, strategic mindset, and passion for technology will make him an invaluable asset to our company," said CEO of Vudoo, Nick Morgan. "His expertise is perfectly aligned with Vudoo's mission to help clients benefit from the new paradigm shift in advertising and e-commerce towards off platform ‘retail everywhere’ shopping experiences driven by the likes of TikTok and Amazon Anywhere.”

Kinchin himself is looking forward to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

"Vudoo is shaping a new content commerce category with its unique technology which takes advertising and elevates it to harness the power of ecommerce. I'm looking forward to helping the industry extract more value from video so advertisers, publishers and consumers can get the full benefit of these next-generation e-commerce experiences," he said.

Vudoo was founded in 2017 and its content commerce platform enables advertisers to enhance their content by creating personalised journeys that capture audience attention and boost engagement. Its patent-pending, in-stream checkout feature allows customers to transact directly within content, enabling advertisers to boost conversions and collapse the sales funnel.

In 2023, Vudoo expanded its operations to North America, opened an office in London and made a number of senior appointments. The addition of Kinchin to the team is expected to further strengthen Vudoo's position in the adtech and e-commerce space.