New York City-based AdMeld, a platform provider of advertising exchange and network optimization tools, announced that it has signed on as its CEO Michael Barrett, former Chief Revenue Officer at Fox Interactive Media (FIM) and EVP of Sales at AOL Media Networks.
In the press release announcing the new hire, Benjamin Barokas, co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer of AdMeld, from JumpTV and AOL, provided a bit of light on what exactly AdMeld does saying, “AdMeld removes complications when dealing with multiple networks and exchanges. No longer do publishers have to deal with disparate tags, interfaces, and conflicting statistics. Our platform increases yield while reducing the resources needed to pull reports, evaluate data, and re-prioritize campaigns in a traditional ad server.”
After an eight-month beta program of its platform according to the release, it would appear AdMeld will compete directly with companies such as Rubicon Project and PubMatic already in the publisher yield management space.
An article in today’s AdWeek offers further differentiation: “Barrett said AdMeld differs from those in its focus on the top 150 publishers. Its beta clients included The Huffington Post and WorldNow, a collection of local media sites.” In regards to yield optimization for web publishers, Barrrett told AdWeek, “It’s a terrific pain point and it’s not going away. It appears there’s less sold inventory. It’s not a problem that’s going to solve itself anytime soon.”
Also, according to Paid Content, AdMeld also completed its Series A round of funding – coming in at a healthy $7 million. Investors include Spark Capital and The Foundry Group.
