Former Tala and Netflix technology leader brings deep expertise in AI and decisioning intelligence as Smartly builds for the next era of agentic advertising
NEW YORK – Oct. 8, 2026 – Smartly, the AI-powered advertising technology company, today announced the appointment of Kelly Uphoff as Chief Technology Officer. Uphoff will lead Smartly’s global engineering organization as the company advances its AI-native platform capabilities, including continuous decision intelligence for marketers across the campaign lifecycle.
“Advertising is entering a fundamentally new era, where AI and intelligent systems will reshape how brands understand and respond to consumers, make decisions and turn intelligence into action,” said Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly. “Kelly understands that in an AI-native system, every signal is an opportunity to learn and make the next decision better. She brings the technical depth, AI expertise and customer orientation to help us accelerate the continuous optimization loops across creative and media, where every action generates intelligence that improves what comes next. That is how we create better experiences for people and better outcomes for marketers.”
Uphoff brings a track record of building and leading global technology organizations at the intersection of AI, data and personalization. At Netflix, she led Data Science and Engineering teams across machine learning, predictive modeling and experimentation, helping advance the technology behind personalized experiences at global scale. Most recently, at Tala, Uphoff led the platform’s transformation, building the infrastructure and systems for delivering secure, personalized financial products globally.
“The next chapter of advertising will require technology that can continuously learn, make better decisions and translate intelligence into experiences that are genuinely relevant to each consumer,” said Kelly Uphoff, incoming CTO of Smartly. “Smartly has built a strong technology foundation and has a compelling opportunity to bring AI, data and decision-making together in ways that create meaningful value for marketers. I’m excited to join the team and help build what comes next to move advertising forward.”
Uphoff succeeds Lauri Tarkkala. Under Tarkkala’s leadership, Smartly rearchitected its technology foundation, advanced its unified platform and integrated acquisitions including Ad-Lib.io, Viralspace.ai, and INCRMNTAL, helping accelerate Smartly’s AI-powered creative and campaign decisioning capabilities
For more information, visit smartly.io.
About Smartly
Smartly is the AI-powered advertising technology company ranked as the leader in The Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising Technologies. Our platform unifies creative and media to produce intelligent creative, dynamic, data-driven image and video assets optimized for seamless activation across channels. Brands manage, optimize, and scale high-performance campaigns in one place, achieving PwC-validated results, including a 5.5x return on ad spend (ROAS) and 42 minutes saved every hour.
We support 800+ brands and manage over $7 billion in ad spend globally. With strategic partnerships across major media platforms, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, Spotify, and TikTok, we help Fortune 500 companies deliver relevant advertising at speed and scale. Backed by deep media expertise and best-in-class customer support, we empower brands to maximize performance and drive real business outcomes. Visit Smartly.io to learn more.
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