Hightouch Appoints Google Advertising Veteran Jitendra Kumar as Head of Commercial, Advertising

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hightouch, the leader in data and AI for marketing, today announced the appointment of Jitendra Kumar as Head of Commercial, Advertising. A 20-year Google veteran who most recently led U.S. agency partnerships, Kumar joins Hightouch as the company expands its vision for agentic marketing and brings AI agents into more of the work marketers do every day.

The appointment comes at a pivotal stage of growth for Hightouch. Earlier this year, the company raised $150 million in Series D funding at a $2.75 billion valuation to accelerate its mission to reinvent how marketing works using AI. Hightouch has grown more than 100% in each of the past two years as enterprises increasingly look to AI agents to move beyond experimentation and transform how marketing is planned, created and executed.

Advertising represents a major part of that opportunity. As ad platforms increasingly automate campaign execution, the advantage for marketers is shifting toward the quality of the data, context and strategy informing those systems. Hightouch is building an Agentic Marketing Platform that gives AI agents access to trusted customer data, brand context and marketing tools so they can help teams identify opportunities, develop creative and execute campaigns across channels.

In his new role, Kumar will focus on expanding Hightouch’s relationships across the advertising ecosystem, with an emphasis on agencies and their brand clients. Drawing on his experience at Google, he will work with holding companies, independent agencies and advertising platforms to help them make first-party data and AI more actionable throughout the media workflow. He will also support broader awareness and adoption of Hightouch’s advertising capabilities, including Ad Studio.

“In my two decades at Google, I saw, firsthand how agencies and marketers struggle with signal loss, fragmented execution, and tech sprawl. Our industry is used to it, but the level of waste and inefficiency would shock an outsider. Agentic marketing offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix how advertising works,” said Kumar. “What drew me to Hightouch is the opportunity to rethink from the ground up how marketers leverage data and trusted context to establish the ultimate competitive advantage. I’m thrilled to join the team to help enterprise brands, agency networks, and platform partners turn first-party intelligence into autonomous, high-ROI business outcomes.”

Kumar spent two decades at Google, where he held leadership roles across the company’s advertising business and most recently led U.S. agency partnerships. During his tenure, his teams worked closely with major agencies and advertisers navigating some of digital advertising’s most significant shifts, giving him deep experience across media, technology and the broader advertising ecosystem.

“Jitendra understands advertising from nearly every angle, and he has spent his career helping some of the largest marketers and agencies navigate major shifts in technology,” said Tejas Manohar, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Hightouch. “We believe AI is going to fundamentally change how agencies and marketing teams operate. The opportunity isn't simply to automate the workflows marketers already have, but to give them entirely new ways to turn their data, strategy and creativity into action. Jitendra brings the experience and perspective we need as we build that future across advertising.”

Hightouch’s expansion into agentic advertising builds on its broader effort to reinvent marketing around AI. Its Agentic Marketing Platform combines customer data, brand context and marketing orchestration to enable AI agents to support work across advertising, email, SMS and web.

About Hightouch

Hightouch is the leading agentic marketing and customer data platform that empowers companies to power personalized marketing and business operations from their very best data. Trusted by leading brands like Domino’s, Autotrader, Cars.com, Aritzia, and PetSmart, Hightouch enables anyone to deliver personalized customer experiences, optimize performance marketing, and move faster by leveraging data and AI across their organization.