AppNexus Makes Key Additions to Leadership Team With Technology and Sales Hires From Google and Vonage

NEW YORK, March 29 /PRNewswire/ -- AppNexus, the real-time ad platform (www.appnexus.com), today announced that it has hired advertising industry veteran Lauren Nemeth as Director of Sales and seasoned technology expert Timothy G. Smith as Vice President of Technical Operations.  Founded and managed by the pioneers of the Web's original and most successful ad exchanges at Yahoo!'s Right Media and Google's DoubleClick, AppNexus offers unparalleled, highly scalable technology, deep industry expertise and plays host to a vibrant community of leading companies within the online advertising ecosystem.

Lauren Nemeth joins AppNexus from Google, where she was sales team manager for Google's DoubleClick Ad Exchange. At DoubleClick and Google, Lauren pioneered a previously-untapped revenue source for the company, by developing relationships with ad networks, behavioral providers, demand-side platforms, SEMs, data providers and affiliates.  At AppNexus, Lauren will continue her focus on working with the ad network community, and will spearhead efforts to help clients leverage AppNexus' gateway to leading sources of real-time ad inventory.  

"AppNexus' unique ad platform addresses a real gap in the market as a complete solution that helps ad networks adapt to and capitalize on the opportunities presented by real-time advertising.  Ad networks are always ahead of the curve and seeking to take advantage of the latest opportunities to evolve their businesses.  The opportunity now is in real-time bidding," said Lauren Nemeth, Director of Sales, AppNexus. "My focus going forward is to demystify the complex process of real-time advertising across the Internet and help our clients transform into the masters of this emerging medium." 

Another coup for AppNexus was to bring on board Timothy G. Smith, who will serve as Vice President of Technical Operations.  Tim brings more than 20 years of systems and network experience to his post combined with a unique mix of technical, operations, and executive skills. As former president of Vonage Network Inc., a subsidiary of Vonage Holdings Corp., Tim oversaw all of Vonage's network and systems operations globally and managed the Vonage Network staff. Before joining Vonage, Tim held key management and technical roles at Sun Microsystems Inc., UUNET Technologies Inc. and Wayport, Inc.  Already the industry's most scalable infrastructure for real-time advertising, AppNexus will benefit from Tim's vast expertise as he oversees the global build-out of its unparalleled infrastructure.

"Our clients know that real-time bidding for display ads has gained incredible traction recently, and we anticipate a tenfold increase in capacity this year," said Timothy G. Smith, Vice President of Technical Operations at AppNexus. "Everyone wants to capitalize on this trend, but the infrastructure required to handle the vast volume of real-time impressions must be hugely scalable on a global basis. AppNexus delivers on that promise, and I joined the company to ensure that we continuously bring that extraordinary value to our customers."

"At AppNexus we're building an all-star team who are results-oriented and passionate about driving innovation in the rapidly changing, real-time display ad marketplace," said Brian O'Kelley, CEO of AppNexus. "Lauren and Tim have been at the forefront of their fields for many years, and it's a big win for AppNexus to have them both on board."

ABOUT APPNEXUS

AppNexus is an advanced ad platform specializing in real-time advertising.  Founded and managed by the pioneers of the Web's original and most successful ad exchanges at Yahoo!'s Right Media and Google's DoubleClick, AppNexus offers unparalleled, highly scalable technology, deep industry expertise and plays host to a vibrant community of leading companies within the online advertising ecosystem. Chosen by eBay, the Web's premier online marketer, as its display advertising partner, the AppNexus platform integrates eBay with all the major inventory sources to execute and optimize its real-time media buys.  AppNexus offers clients a complete set of ad technology capabilities including data management, optimization, APIs, financial clearing and support for directly negotiated media campaigns.  Overall, AppNexus empowers sophisticated companies including direct marketers, ad networks and demand-side platforms to build, manage and optimize their entire display advertising businesses and provides single-point integration to the largest sources of inventory including the major inventory aggregators and ad exchanges like Google's DoubleClick and Microsoft's AdECN.

Based in New York City, AppNexus is backed by an outstanding group of investors, including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz from LoudCloud/OpsWare; First Round Capital; Venrock; Grape Arbor; Kodiak Venture Partners; Ron Conway; and Khosla Ventures. For more information, go to www.appnexus.com.

SOURCE AppNexus