LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--the Rubicon Project, the advertising technology company, today welcomes industry veteran Jay Sears as SVP, Marketplace Development, where he will oversee relations with the advertising networks, agency trading desks and demand-side platforms who leverage the company’s real-time trading platform, REVV, in the United States and other areas outside of Europe. Sears was most recently General Manager of the PulsePoint Ad Exchange for PulsePoint (fka CONTEXTWEB Inc.).
Expanding the publisher client services team to support the Rubicon Project’s burgeoning comScore 500 customer base, and to continue providing superior guidance and expertise to publishers, Jeremy Fain is appointed to Vice President Client Services. Jeremy joins the company from CBS Interactive where he was Director of Network Solutions. As part of an immediate effort to grow the New York-based publisher services group further, Grant Sterling joins Fain’s team as Account Director from his prior post at NBC Universal.
Sears, based in the company’s fast-growing New York office, will serve as SVP, Marketplace Development and will build out the Rubicon Project’s existing demand side trading business. “Just this summer, I wrote a blog post ‘SSPs are Dead’. The fact is the opportunity for the Rubicon Project is much larger,” said Sears. “Whether the ad network, agency trading desk or demand-side platform uses their own bidder or the Rubicon bidder via the company’s REVV for demand interface, digital ad buyers can easily access more than 4 billion impressions every day from 450 high-quality publishers. Access to the platform provides buyers scale and quality that is unmatched in the market, with some 20% of comScore 500 leading digital properties, including Time Inc., NBC Universal, News Corporation and CareerBuilder using REVV.”
“the Rubicon Project’s mission is and has always been to automate the buying and selling of online advertising. We started with a focus on publishers and now Jay will deliver this same message of commitment and quality around the real-time trading opportunity to our 600 plus active demand partners in the US and around the globe,” said Nick Hulse, CRO of the Rubicon Project. “Jay, Jeremy and Grant will be located in the New York office, signalling an additional commitment to publishers and buyers in New York.”
As General Manager of the PulsePoint Ad Exchange, Sears brought new products to market and drove key strategic relationships resulting in audience and revenue acquisition. Sears joined the company in 2004 and helped build its media business from inception. Prior to ContextWeb, Sears was SVP Business & Strategy Development for EDGAR Online, where he drove the strategy that took the company from an under $1 million entrepreneurial business to a publicly traded NASDAQ company. He also co-chairs the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ad Networks and Exchanges Committee and helped write its Quality Assurance Guidelines.
“Jeremy and Grant come to the Rubicon Project with deep ad operations experience, in their case on the publisher side at CBS, NBC, Cox, as well as at the IAB. Having sat in the chair of such high quality media businesses, they are in a prime position to enable our publishers to develop the best overall monetization strategy for their high-value inventory and audience assets,” adds Hulse.
At CBS Interactive, Fain managed $30 million in advertising revenue across audience targeting, advanced data strategies and CBS’s Private Exchange. At the Rubicon Project, Fain will lead the team responsible for servicing and enabling the company’s 450 premium publisher customers to leverage the REVV real-time trading platform. Prior to CBS Interactive, Fain was VP of Industry Services at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).
Grant Sterling, formerly Platform Manager at NBC Universal, joins Fain and the team in the New York office as Account Director. Applying industry knowledge and a publisher-focused background, which started with his work at CoxNet, Sterling will join the company’s established client services team to deliver publishers the highest level of support in building a strategic overall monetization plan to help drive higher revenue.
About the Rubicon Project
the Rubicon Project launched in 2007 with a mission to automate buying and selling across the $65 billion global online advertising industry. REVV, the company’s real-time digital ad trading platform, has optimized nearly two trillion ad transactions for more than 450 of the largest properties on the Internet. REVV helps premium Web publishers like Time Inc., News International and CareerBuilder make more money by optimizing their ad revenue, eliminating unnecessary ad operations costs, protecting and growing their direct sales channel and ensuring their sites’ visitors are safe. More than 600 ad networks, exchanges and DSPs access premium inventory and audiences through the REVV and its unparalleled reach of more than 575 million unique users. Headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in New York, Seattle, London, Paris, Hamburg and Sydney, the company is backed by $60 million in funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, IDG Ventures Asia, Comcast Ventures and News Corporation.