Oil in the engine: Ludo’s vision for product marketing at HAQM Ads
Meet Ludovic (Ludo) de Valon, Director of Product Marketing, who is on a mission to re-imagine advertising by building a customer-obsessed product marketing team.
We caught up with Ludo to talk about customers, the holy grail of advertising, and what makes a great product marketer.
Hi, Ludo. Let’s start with this: Why did you join HAQM Ads?
Previously I held product marketing leadership roles at TikTok and Google. But at HAQM Ads, I saw a chance to build something new and re-define what great product marketing will look like in the next decade.
Personally, I was drawn to HAQM’s entrepreneurial culture. We call ourselves “the world’s biggest startup”—and those are not empty words. You’re encouraged to invent here—not just groundbreaking technology, but new processes, programs, and ways of working. You have the scale and resources of a large company with the mindset of a customer-obsessed startup, where speed is valued.
I believe HAQM Ads is uniquely positioned to succeed in the long term. The holy grail in advertising for the last 50 years has been full-funnel advertising with closed-loop measurement, helping brands build awareness, expand their customer bases, and measure results accurately. HAQM’s customer signals and access to advertising inventory across HAQM.com, Prime Video, and thousands of third-party publishers make it possible to deliver on that promise. Right now, we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible. It’s very exciting.
What’s your vision for the product marketing organization at Ads?
I want to help HAQM Ads grow and become the leading AI-driven media company. Product Marketing Managers (PMMs) make this happen. We’re the oil in the HAQM Ads engine—a critical but often unseen driver of success.
We’re all about equipping product teams with the precise inbound insights they need to build customer-focused solutions and arming the sales teams with clear, launch-ready toolkits highlighting the value of our products.
In my experience, the reason PMMs matter so much is that it’s difficult for product teams to translate technical concepts into the business language that customers will understand. PMMs bring this skill set. We translate ideas into clear product requests, and we turn code into compelling value propositions that speak to real customer needs. That’s what I mean by the oil in the engine.
What makes a great PMM?
First and foremost, a great PMM is the voice of the customer. This means understanding what customers—from enterprise to midmarket to small and medium businesses—are saying about the product and knowing what their business needs are. But more importantly, it’s about organizing that feedback into something useful. A good PMM takes all that input, quantitative and qualitative, and synthesizes it so that the product manager can act on it.
I believe the most effective setup is to have PMMs own both inbound and outbound elements of the product life cycle. Each PMM should be fully responsible for their product or product area. That’s how you stay close to your customers and the product so that you can drive adoption, build customer loyalty, and, most importantly, measure customer impact. Because in the end, a product only succeeds if customers find value in it.
What skills does a bar-raising PMM need?
Here I call on HAQM’s key Leadership Principles. There are a few that really speak to the PMM team. First is Learn and Be Curious. Advertising is a fast-moving world. Technology is advancing, and global competition is increasing every day. You need to be plugged in, paying attention and staying one step ahead to keep delighting our customers.
Second, you need to Have Backbone. A good PMM has to say “No”—a lot. “No” to the product team when their request doesn’t quite meet customer needs. “No” to the sales teams when the feature isn’t the main priority or based on a customer pain point. We need to prioritize and simplify so that we don’t overwhelm our customers.
And finally, Bias for Action. We’re looking for people who just get the job done!
What do you look for when building a team?
The best PMMs work closely with the product and sales teams to invent new value propositions, new commercial terms, and even new products tailored to specific customer needs. We’re looking for people who can meet the bar and raise it.
Building the strongest team means finding a great mix of people. Some may have product management experience, others strong marketing backgrounds, still others deep tech experience or skills from different industries altogether.
Ad tech experience helps for a fast ramp-up, but overall, we want to hire people who align with our mission and Leadership Principles. If you have a good product acumen and willingness to learn fast, previous experience in ad tech is not a deal-breaker for us.
And finally, where do you want the team to be a year from now?
On the product marketing team, our two main customers are the product and sales teams. So in 12 months, I want to hear those leaders say, “How were we able to build HAQM Ads before the product marketing team existed?” That’s the goal.