Dive Brief:

• CLEAR alum Alexis DeSieno was appointed finance chief of digital advertising platform Cardlytics, effective August 14, according to a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• DiSieno will take the Atlanta, Georgia-based company’s financial reins from its CEO Karim Temsamani, who was appointed as interim CFO and chief accounting officer after Cardlytics’ previous CFO Andrew Christiansen announced in March that he would be retiring from the role, effective July 21, according to the filing. Christiansen is leaving the firm after logging a three-year tenure as the company’s CFO and a total of eight years at the company, according to a company press release. 
• As its CFO, DeSieno will receive a base salary of $400,000, as well as 350,000 restricted stock units and is eligible for an annual bonus of 75% of her base salary, according to the filing. She will also receive a signing bonus of $165,000, which would need to be paid back in full should DeSieno leave the company within 12 months of her hiring date, the filing said.

Dive Insight:

Cardlytics is a digital advertising platform focused on the banking industry, working with financial institutions to run their rewards programs, according to the company.

Before joining the digital advertising platform, DeSieno most recently served as SVP of finance for biometric identification company, CLEAR Secure, where she played a key role in the identification company’s initial public offering. CLEAR went public in 2021 with a valuation of $4.5 billion, according to a 2021 report by Forbes.

Prior to CLEAR, DeSieno served as a VP for fitness company SoulCycle. Her past roles also include a stint as director for the Estee Lauder Companies, as well as roles at banks Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, and Morgan Stanley, according to her LinkedIn profile.

DeSieno is taking the digital advertising company’s top financial seat as it faces a continuing slump in the digital advertising space. Beginning last year, rising interest rates caused many companies to be thriftier when it comes to their ad spending, an attitude that has continued to be a point of concern for such companies as Google parent Alphabet and Meta Platforms, as well as technology company SNAP. The latter company reported a 17% dip in revenue for its most recent quarter, which followed a change to the company’s ad tools, according to an April report by Seeking Alpha.

Cardlytics reported a 5.3% dip in revenue year-over-year to $64.3 million in the first quarter. While quarterly results exceeded the company’s expectations — which occurred despite “real difficulties” in the economy and the advertising space — the company is expecting the economic outlook to remain challenging, CEO Temsamani said during the company’s earnings call. As such, Cardlytics will continue to make “prudent financial decisions,” including focusing on improving its cost base, he said according to an earnings transcript.

A continued focus on product leadership as well as prudent investments on the part of the company has led to a recent stock rally, according to a Friday report by Zacks Equity Research. The company is expected to post an 8% year-over-year decline in revenue to $69.3 million for its upcoming quarter, according to the report.

Cardlytics did not respond to requests for comment.