SmartNews Head of Business Marketing Emily Kunkel Advances US Mobile Native Advertising as Platform Marks Major Product Expansion

SAN FRANCISCO, July 05, 2026 — Emily Kunkel, Head of Business Marketing, US at SmartNews, is at the forefront of the company's expanding US advertising business, having led the commercial launch of its first-party ad platform and scaled mobile native advertising into a multi-million dollar revenue stream.

SmartNews, founded in 2012 and now valued at $2 billion, operates one of the world's leading news discovery platforms. With over 50 million downloads, more than 10 million monthly active users, and partnerships with over 3,000 global publishers, the company has established itself as a significant force in mobile media. Its flagship app uses machine learning to surface quality news content, with offices in San Francisco, Tokyo, and New York supporting its international operations. The company has raised more than $410 million in total funding across eight rounds, with its most recent venture debt financing of $69.3 million closed in January 2024.

Kunkel brings more than 15 years of B2B revenue marketing experience to her role, with a career spanning brand marketing at Yahoo!, mobile product marketing at LinkedIn, and demand generation leadership at Workday. At SmartNews, she has been instrumental in building out the US ad business from the ground up — aligning Sales, Product, and Revenue Operations to convert market signals into measurable pipeline growth. Her work has positioned SmartNews Ads as a credible alternative for performance-driven brands seeking brand-safe, transparent digital environments at scale. The platform's native ad products integrate within editorial news feeds and are supported by AI-driven optimization tools including Max Conversion and target cost-per-acquisition (tCPA) capabilities.

"My role is focused on helping brands evolve their digital and performance-based strategies to prioritise higher-quality, more intentional environments," said Emily Kunkel, Head of Business Marketing, US at SmartNews. "I'm an advocate for mobile native ads because they allow brands to reach a captive audience that is actively engaging with credible news content — and advertisers can achieve that scale without the lack of transparency often found in traditional digital channels."

The broader SmartNews platform has seen a wave of product activity in the past twelve months. In July 2025, SmartNews launched Self-Serve Ads, enabling advertisers to create and manage campaigns independently. That same month, SmartNews+ reached 100,000 cumulative subscribers. In August 2025, the company released NewsArc, an AI-powered news application, and launched its Trustmark Award recognising America's most trusted journalists and newsrooms. Most recently, in March 2026, SmartNews introduced a first-of-its-kind US Rewards Program allowing users to earn points for reading news, redeemable for gift cards or charitable donations. These product developments reflect a platform actively expanding both its consumer proposition and its advertising infrastructure simultaneously.

For brands and performance marketers seeking alternatives to walled-garden platforms, SmartNews Ads offers contextual targeting based on content engagement, full bottom-of-funnel tracking visibility, and competitive CPCs and CPMs. Kunkel's marketing leadership continues to shape how the business communicates that value proposition to US advertisers at a time when mobile news environments are gaining renewed attention as high-quality, intent-driven channels.

About SmartNews
SmartNews is a global news discovery platform founded in 2012, using machine learning to deliver quality news to over 10 million monthly active users across its app, which has surpassed 50 million downloads worldwide. The company partners with more than 3,000 publishers and offers advertising solutions through SmartNews Ads, accessible at smartnews.com.