Telefonica Digital Establishes Silicon Valley Team to Create New Mobile Advertising Formats and Drive Innovation Globally

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Telefonica Digital, today announced the appointment of Joshua Ramirez to Director of Product and Innovation.  Ramirez will head a newly established team focused on developing new mobile advertising formats. Based in Silicon Valley, the new team will drive innovation within the advertising sector, including video, data and other new formats, producing effective and engaging advertising solutions.

Ramirez, who was most recently Senior Director, Product Management at AOL and previously Worldwide Product Marketing Manager at Apple, will report to Shaun Gregory, Global Director of Advertising at Telefonica Digital.

Telefonica Digital was formed by Telefonica to drive growth opportunities in the new digital world. Advertising represents one of its key focus areas in digital services as it unlocks the huge potential within mobile for advertisers. Mobile's share of overall media spend is currently disproportionate to the increasing amount of time that consumers spend using their smartphones, representing a significant market opportunity. Currently, mobile advertising accounts for 3 percent of spend versus around 12 percent of consumer's time (source – Mary Meeker).

"We have only just begun to understand the power of mobile advertising," said Shaun Gregory, Global Director of Advertising at Telefonica Digital.  "The establishment of this new team is recognition of the need to evolve beyond current advertising formats. Silicon Valley was the natural place to build a team whose mission is to shake things up and innovate on a global scale. Joshua has the perfect experience and capabilities to lead this team and is a further demonstration of Telefonica Digital's commitment to bringing in the best talent."

Mobile advertising sits at the center of a very disruptive advertising market, transformed through technology, data and, ultimately, personalization. However, to date, the formats haven't leveraged the true opportunity, nor have they been winning the hearts and minds of consumers. Telefonica Digital believes there's a huge gap in the market, and one we'd like to exploit. The future growth in the industry will be driven by innovative formats that appeal to consumers, ones that provide a marriage of targeting and true relevancy. For this reason, Telefonica Digital is focused on video, data products, rich media and more – all forms of communication that provide experiences that work for consumers, brands and agencies.

Joshua Ramirez commented, "As the mobile environment evolves rapidly, a new approach to advertising is required and Telefonica is well placed to drive that change. With the ability to reach more than 315 million people around the world, Telefonica Digital has an incredible platform upon which to innovate."

Ramirez joins Telefonica Digital from AOL where he was responsible for leading the full-scale redesign of the AOL Mail experience, resulting in a significant increase in user retention and double-digit increases in display and search monetization, as well as the development of Alto by AOL – a complete reimagining of what email could and should be. Prior to that, Ramirez was Principal Product Manager at eBay where he was responsible for the overall search experience.  Ramirez also spent several years at Apple where he defined and launched numerous products key to Apple's .Mac consumer-based suite of software.

About Telefonica Digital
Telefonica Digital is a global business division of Telefonica. Its mission is to seize the opportunities within the digital world and deliver new growth for Telefonica through research & development, venture capital, global partnerships and digital services such as cloud computing, security services, mobile advertising, M2M and eHealth. It is also driving innovation in over the top communications under a new umbrella brand called TU and in Big Data through Telefonica Dynamic Insights.

Telefonica Digital will deliver these new products and services to Telefónica's 316 million customers as well as entering new markets. It is headquartered in London with regional centres in Silicon Valley, Sao Paulo, Spain and Tel Aviv. Jajah, TokBox, Terra, Media Networks Latin America, 48 and giffgaff are all managed under the Telefonica Digital umbrella.

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SOURCE Telefonica Digital