Image credit: Source: Catena Media company statement. Never imply stock depicts the actual event.
Catena Media named board member Martin Zetterlund as interim chief technology officer effective September 17, replacing Edward Midolo, who held the role since April 2024, without naming a permanent successor. The Malta-headquartered affiliate group confirmed the appointment through a company announcement, describing it as a consultancy arrangement that runs "until a permanent chief technology officer takes up the role."
The timing is the story. Catena Media is mid-build on the one asset meant to end its dependence on Google search traffic, a fully automated marketplace connecting publishers and operators that chief executive Manuel Stan has told investors will reach full commercial launch in the first half of 2027. That platform now changes technical leadership with a consultant in the chair rather than a permanent hire, while the company is separately buying back its own subordinated debt at 20 cents on the euro and has cut headcount five times in roughly two years.
Who takes the chair, and how
Zetterlund is not new to Catena Media. He has sat on the board since December 2024, bringing a cybersecurity background: he co-founded Sentor Managed Security Services in 1998, which Accenture acquired in 2021, later founded the anti-scraping firm ScrapeSentry, and held a senior vice president role at Distil Networks. He keeps his board seat while running technology day to day, reporting to Stan.
"Martin has followed our technology work closely from the board and knows the organisation well," Stan said in the announcement. "His experience of building and running technology businesses will support the team while we complete the recruitment of a permanent CTO." The company has not given a timeline for that search, and confirmed only that it is under way.
Midolo's exit itself was not explained publicly. He had been promoted into the CTO role in April 2024 after eight years at the company, a run that covered Catena's shift from a portfolio of SEO content sites toward the marketplace model now central to its pitch to investors. Neither Catena Media nor Midolo has given a reason for the departure, and this piece treats that silence as exactly what it is: unexplained, not evidence of anything more.
A platform that needed continuity just lost it
Catena has been explicit that the marketplace, branded MRKTPLAYS, is the answer to a problem the rest of the quarter's numbers make plain. On the second-quarter earnings call, Stan told analysts the company is "developing a next-generation, fully automated marketplace that connects publishers and advertisers across a wider set of verticals, with analytics and intelligence at its core," and that it already "contributes more than a third of group revenues." He added the company would "share more details as we approach the full commercial launch in the first half of 2027."
That is a technology roadmap with a fixed date, run by engineering leadership that just turned over at the top. An interim CTO under a consultancy agreement is, by definition, not the person expected to still be there when the platform ships. Whoever Catena hires permanently inherits a build already in flight, on a deadline the company has already put a number on in public.
The rest of Catena's year gives that leadership gap more weight than it would carry alone. Group revenue fell 1% to €9.5 million in the second quarter, with adjusted EBITDA margin nearly halved to 13%, as organic search traffic kept weakening. The company has cut roles five times in about two years, most recently five positions across technology, marketing and regional sites in early August. And Catena is not paying interest on €43.7 million of perpetual hybrid bonds, buying a small slice back at 20% of face value in September while CFO Michael Gerrow told investors the company has "no plans to initiate interest payments anytime for the foreseeable future."
None of that is new information on its own. What is new is that the technology function building the one product meant to fix all of it now runs on a consultancy agreement with no named end date attached to a permanent hire.
Why this matters beyond one company
Catena is not alone in treating a technology or data platform as the affiliate industry's way out of Google's grip on organic search. Better Collective's push into owned media, Raketech's AffiliationCloud and Grandstand's data business are different versions of the same wager: that an affiliate can out-build the algorithm rather than keep competing for the same shrinking set of rankings. Gentoo Media's own guidance cut in August showed how uneven that transition is even for a company not carrying Catena's debt structure. Every one of these bets depends on execution continuity that a distressed balance sheet makes harder to guarantee, because the engineers and executives who could earn more stability elsewhere have the least reason to wait around for a turnaround to prove itself.
For operators weighing which affiliate partners to build long-term integrations with, an interim technology chief at a platform vendor is a due-diligence flag, not a footnote. A publisher-operator marketplace is infrastructure. Infrastructure customers care who is answerable for uptime, roadmap and security a year from now, not just at signing. Catena's own investor materials lean on MRKTPLAYS as proof the pivot is working. The leadership question sitting underneath that pitch is whether the platform is being built by a team stable enough to still be there in the first half of 2027, or by whoever a consultancy agreement hands the keys to next.
The consultant is running the build the company bet its future on
Zetterlund knows the company, sits on its board and has run technology businesses before. None of that changes what "interim" means. Catena Media is asking the market to trust a fixed 2027 delivery date for the product replacing its core revenue engine, at the exact moment the person accountable for building it works under a contract with no end date of its own.
Related coverage: Catena Media's Growth Stalls as Search Traffic Slips | Catena Media Buys Back Hybrid Bonds at 20 Cents on the Euro | Catena Media Cuts Five More Roles From Its Regional Sites Team | Gentoo Media Cuts Full-Year Guidance as Refinancing Drags On