Performance marketing agency Croud this week announced the appointment of former Google executive and analytics guru Avinash Kaushik to global chief strategy officer.

Kaushik comes to Croud after 16 years at Google, where he served in a variety of roles related to analytics and marketing, and built a strategic consulting practice for Google’s largest customers. Most recently he supported the company as senior director, global strategic analytics.

Kaushik, who is part of the team that launched Google Analytics, will support Croud’s clients in areas from strategy, product and data to global mergers and acquisitions.

One of the most vivid memories I have of Avinash Kaushik is sitting in a room at Google and listening to him tell me the importance of failing, as well as learning from failure. I was very new to MediaPost at the time.

Kaushik is the author of two books — Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day — as well as a weekly newsletter with over 55,000 subscribers. He has donated more than $1 million to charities supporting civil rights, refugees and early childhood education in the U.S. and abroad, donating the full revenue from his newsletter subscriptions and books.

His hire fits into Croud’s future. Luke Smith, Croud founder and CEO, wanted to change the way things work in digital marketing by leveraging a unique business model to provide clients with superior service and results, but also by changing the way people work in digital.

“Since its founding in 2011, Croud has been focused on delivering transformative results for its clients through disruptive innovation as applied to process, tools and business models,” Kaushik stated. “The opportunity to work hand-in-hand with Luke and our global teams to deliver a step change in Croud’s impact, while leading the charge for the entire industry, is thrilling to say the least.”

As of November 2022, the company had more than 450 in-house employees, and the 2,500 on-demand digital experts who are part of our crowd-sourced network in which the company calls “Croudies” to provide a flexible work-life balance.

Last year marked a turning point for Croud. The company transitioned into the next stage of business growth, moving from organic to acquisition based. Within a 12-month period, it acquired impakt Advisors, the data solutions agency; VERB Brands, the luxury-focused performance agency; and Born Social, the global social media agency.

Croud has also redefined its U.S. business to combine strategies for brands with performance media and creative.