Virtual Minds strengthens its technology division and hires Sascha Stojakovic as CTO

Freiburg, 19. February 2025: Virtual Minds is further expanding its technology division. To this end, the operator of the leading European full-tech stack for digital advertising has appointed Sascha Stojakovic to its CTO office as of 1. February. Stojakovic, who joins from AI workforce transformation specialist Cobrainer, expands the tech management team previously made up of Tom Peruzzi, Spokesperson of the management board, and Branislava Papic, VP Technology, and takes over the position of CTO with operational responsibility from Peruzzi.

Sascha Stojakovic, a proven tech innovation expert with a clear agenda for excellence and a longstanding companion, is joining the Virtual Minds CTO Office. The passionate software developer has been involved in the value-added conception, implementation and optimisation of innovative digital technologies and data- and AI-based solutions in the B2B sector for 20 years, with a focus on video and moving images for ten years.

In addition to consulting and project management activities, his professional career has also included heading the ad technology unit at SevenOne Media, where he achieved significant operational efficiency gains by introducing a self-service booking platform for advertising customers and optimising the use of ad servers, for example. As Director and Vice President Engineering at Joyn and member of the IT Board of ProSiebenSat.1, he was successful with the use of AI-supported KPIs for revenue optimisation with innovative advertising technologies and the cross-device standardisation of the player infrastructure to strengthen the cross-channel playout of programmatic video advertising. In his last position before joining Virtual Minds, Stojakovic was responsible as CTPO of Cobrainer for the growth-orientated technological realignment, including the development of new product offerings, and contributed to a sustainable strengthening of the company’s market position and competitiveness with consistent product and innovation management and the implementation of high-quality quality and safety standards.

Reorganisation of the CTO Office

As the new CTO of Virtual Minds, Stojakovic takes over the tech infrastructure area and, in addition to the AI development agenda, is primarily responsible for the IT architecture, technology standards and security, the software development culture and further increasing the delivery and service quality of the ad tech provider. As VP Technology, Papic will continue to lead the tech development teams and processes, while Peruzzi will increasingly focus on the strategic tech orientation, international market communication as part of the European roadmap and work in German and European industry associations, and will continue to be responsible for the technology area as part of the Virtual Minds management team.

‘With the expansion of our CTO office, we are responding to the increasing performance and innovation requirements of the market as well as the growth plans of our company in other European countries,’ explains Tom Peruzzi, Spokesperson of the management board at Virtual Minds. ‘I am therefore all the more pleased that we have succeeded in recruiting Sascha to Virtual Minds, from companion to trailblazer. With his excellent track record, his first-class tech know-how and his scaling expertise, we will further consolidate our leading market position and expand it in a future-oriented manner, especially in the moving image sector.’