Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Nine new media experts join Chicago, New York and Santa Monica Offices

SANTA MONICA, CALIF. – MARCH 17, 2010 – Adconion (www.adconion.com) today announced that it has added nine new U.S. employees. Stephan Doliov, Sue Donahue, Melissa Marra, Allyson Pizula, Lisa Beranek, Susie Moore, Tal Almany, Vanessa Apodaca and Aaron Pang, bring media, video and data expertise to the company’s sales, media and engineering teams.

“Video and data are huge initiatives for our company in 2010, and each of our new team members bring experience and capabilities that will help us grow our video offerings and improve the information we provide to our clients,” said Keith Kaplan, president of North America. “We have a great team of talented individuals who we’re committed to developing – whether that’s through our in-house training program, the Adconion Academy, or external education – so we can offer our clients the best service in the industry.”

With more than 10 years of experience at publicly-traded Internet companies like Netflix, Shopping.com and Overture Services, Inc., Stephan Doliov joins Adconion as vice president of applied analytics. In this role, Stephan will use his deep experience with large scale, low latency data systems and analytics to manage all of Adconion’s industry-leading data initiatives, including all data delivery and audience network optimization technology. He will also manage the company’s data services and alchemist teams, which are responsible for gathering, storing, mining and enriching data, as well as developing algorithms that power Adconion’s network. Stephan joins Adconion from Netflix, where he was the director of technology strategy and planning.

With more than 10 years of experience in media sales, Sue Donahue comes to Adconion as strategic sales director based in Chicago. In her role, she will lead Adconion’s Chicago-based sales team in all sales initiatives, with a particular focus around online video and branding campaigns. Most recently, as the senior director, Midwest region for NeoEdge, Sue was responsible for establishing NeoEdge and its product in the advertising community. Sue has also worked at Entertainment Weekly (EW.com) and Atom Entertainment/MTV Networks.

Also from NeoEdge, Melissa Marra joins Adconion as strategic sales director based out of New York. In her role, she will be responsible for driving revenue and building relationships with advertising agencies in New York, while focusing on developing branding campaigns that combine online video and display advertising. Prior to joining Adconion, Melissa was the vice president of advertising sales at NeoEdge Networks, and worked as the regional vice president of sales at Metacafe. She has more than 15 years of experience in advertising sales and has worked at CNET Networks Entertainment, IAC and Excite@Home.

Another addition to the growing team in New York is Lisa Beranek, who comes to Adconion as an account manager. Lisa brings a blend of agency and portal experience to the team, having worked as an account manager at AOL, a digital media buyer at Spark SMG, and a media planner at Starcom Worldwide.

Allyson Pizula joins Adconion as video business development manager based out of the company’s Santa Monica office. She will be responsible for developing and executing a strategy to syndicate video programming to Adconion’s network of 2,000 premium publishers in North America. Before Adconion, Allyson worked at MySpace where she focused on developing the sports segment, establishing strategic partnerships and distribution plans to bring content and traffic-generating programs to the site.

Each new employee brings a solid background in online video and is expected to work on Adconion’s video products, including the Joost Video Network. Launched earlier this month, the Joost Video Network provides advertisers and brand marketers with a comprehensive in-banner and in-stream video advertising solution that combines the reach and quality of a video portal with the scale and efficiency of a network.

Adconion has also increased its U.S. media buying team to make sure campaigns are booked and trafficked efficiently across premium publishers. Susie Moore joins the team in New York as a senior media buyer; previously, she ran Add2One’s publisher business in Australia.

In Santa Monica, Tal Almany and Aaron Pang have joined Adconion as media buyers, and Vanessa Apodaca has joined as a strategic media planner. Tal brings experience from the publisher and agency side of the business, and will be focusing his buying efforts on automotive, business/finance, food and wine and travel verticals. Aaron joins Adconion from Atomic Online, and will focus his buying efforts on casual gaming, entertainment and sports verticals, as well as ISPs and portals and directories. Vanessa joins Adconion from OMD and will be responsible for developing strategic media plans for Adconion’s network of 2,000 premium publishers.

Adconion has aggressive growth plans for 2010, with expectations to increase its global headcount by nearly 50 percent. To support this expansion, Adconion has recently moved into new offices in Toronto and will be moving into new office space in New York City later this month.