Digital B2B Opps: Freshworks taps marketing leader amid digital spend increases (Score 50)
Sales lead: This hire may lead to spend shifts or agency appointments. 
- Freshworks hired Mika Yamamoto as chief customer and marketing officer in November 2023.
- Yamamoto joins from F5, where she served as chief customer engagement and marketing officer.
- In her new role, she will manage the global marketing & customer experience teams.
Target demographic: Businesses
The company will likely:
- Keep ramping up digital spend
- Experiment with new marketing channels
- Outsource some marketing duties to agency partners
Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
- YTD spend: Freshworks has not aired a national TV since spending $51.1k in 2021.
- 2021 ad programming: It placed ads during programming such as Squawk on the Street, Mad Money, TechCheck, Closing Bell, and Squawk Box.
Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
- YTD spend: Freshworks spent around $1.6m on digital display ads YTD, a significant increase from $207k spent in this channel during the same time period of 2022.
- YTD data: 186.1m impressions via desktop display (79%), Facebook (14%), YouTube (4%), and Instagram (3%).
- 2021-2022 spend: Full-year spend jumped from $198.2k in 2021 to $284.6k in 2022.
- Ad location: It placed 94% of these ads directly onto sites such as earthlink.net, facebook.com, tigerdroppings.com, ndnation.com, and youtube.com. It placed 6% of these ads through multiple indirect channels onto sites such as economist.com, ebay.com, ndnation.com, akc.org, and wattpad.com.
Agency analysis:
- Opportunity: CMO hires are the number one sign of upcoming agency appointments.
- We have not confirmed any current agency relationships for Freshworks.
Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics.
