One other former government from Apple’s iAd enterprise has made a transfer to a different cell advert enterprise: Mike Owen, who had been a senior supervisor overseeing iAd’s New York workplace, is becoming a member of cell video advert community AdColony as its chief income officer. The information comes amid two different government appointments for AdColony — Ty Heath as CTO, and Abe Pralle as VP of know-how, each becoming a member of from gaming firm Plasmaworks.
Essentially the most excessive profile departures at iAd have been ex-head Andy Miller, who left last year to hitch Highland Capital; and Lars Albright, who helped had helped discovered Quattro Wi-fi after which set up iAd after Apple purchased Quattro.
In March, Albright launched a startup known as SessionM that gives a cell advert platform that appears to enhance engagement in cell advertisements by incorporating gamification components. It raised $20 million in Could.
(Apple’s iAd has Apple has additionally made some key hires as properly: it picked up Todd Teresi, previously of Adobe, to exchange Miller on the prime. A former Yahoo, Jessica Jensen, has additionally gone to iAd.)
In his function at Apple, Owen had overseen the corporate’s New York workplace — arguably an important, given lots of the predominant gamers within the advert trade are so closely concentrated there. His new job as CRO at AdColony relies in Los Angeles, the place he will likely be answerable for general firm income.
Cell promoting remains to be a comparatively small parts of the general marketplace for promoting: ZenithOptimedia forecasts this 12 months will see $486 billion in advert revenues within the U.S., however eMarketer forecasts only $2.6 billion for cell advertisements. On the similar time, although, the rise of smartphone utilization has had a knock-on impact in rising these areas, and so these within the area are seeing speedy development.
AdColony says that its enterprise has grown by ten instances over the past two quarters in comparison with 2010 and 2011 — though it isn’t sharing income figures.
The corporate’s enterprise is two-fold: it’s constructed across the thought of serving video into advertisements working throughout completely different websites, and it additionally has developed some revolutionary applied sciences round sure video advert codecs, such one it calls HD Cell Video. Previous to AdColony, its founders had been app builders themselves, making some 200 apps for manufacturers like ESPN, Sony Music, 20th Century Fox, Common Music and CBS Cell.
This isn’t too removed from the high-impact, rich-media facet of iAd, so it ought to be a product that Owen can promote properly if the packaging is correct for the viewers — one subject with iAd, particularly in its early days, had been the excessive charges and management that Apple had been desirous to exert on the method of making and distributing the advertisements.
“AdColony is delivering wealthy, quick cell video experiences to shoppers in a cell video ecosystem that’s riddled with velocity and high quality points,” Owen mentioned in a press release. “Video is extremely highly effective for shoppers and types and AdColony’s know-how is permitting premium publishers to ship the best high quality video expertise to their shoppers, which is translating into unprecedented outcomes for advertisers. The post-PC period has simply begun and we now have a transparent alternative to vary the best way shoppers take into consideration, and expertise promoting on their cell units.”
AdColony has just lately opened a San Francisco workplace and is making ready additionally to broaden to New York.