Senior Ad Exec Dev Patel Leaves Yahoo

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Dev Patel, a respected ad products executive at Yahoo, is leaving the company.

Patel joined Yahoo in 2005 through the acquisition of his startup Whereonearth, a local search company. As VP of advertiser and publisher solutions, he had oversight of, among other things, Yahoo's Smart Ads dynamic display ad product and its search retargeting offering.

Back in May, he led the expansion of Smart Ads to the Yahoo homepage. Since the homepage can receive over 100 million views a month, per comScore, the move required the company to bulk up its ad decision and serving capabilities - something it achieved through the 2010 acquisition of Dapper.

"We need to ensure our backend is hardened to deliver very strong [service] to the homepage," he told ClickZ at the time. "It's bloody important for our advertisers because they can reach a large number of users.