Home Mobile Admeld Band Re-Unites: Kelly Joins Millennial Media CEO Barrett

Admeld Band Re-Unites: Kelly Joins Millennial Media CEO Barrett

SHARE:

reunitedIn a reprise of their recent startup adventure, former Sociomantic CEO and Admeld exec Jason Kelly will become “President of the Company’s Managed Media” as Millennial CEO Michael Barrett looks to re-create the programmatic magic of his Admeld days which led to an eventual acquisition by Google.

From today’s release (see it):

“Reporting to CEO and President Michael Barrett, Kelly will be responsible for leading the Company’s global brand and performance sales teams. Kelly is expected to join the Company in mid-October.”

Barrett hired another former Admeld exec, Marc Theermann, as its EVP of Business Strategy in June.

For Kelly, his most recent stop was demand-side platform and retargeting firm Sociomantic which he joined in 2012 and then successfully guided to acquisition by mega-retailer Tesco for its Dunnhumby unit in April.

Barrett and Kelly have their work cut out for them as Millennial’s business model flips from ad network to programmatic and Millennial’s stock price and, consequently, access to available growth capital do them no favors.

Last week, mobile ad exchange Nexage was acquired by Millennial for $108 million in a next-programmatic-step for the Baltimore-based company. Millennial’s market cap hovers around $200 million. (Admeld was acquired by Google for ~$400 million in 2011.)

Considering that it’s still early days in the data-driven digital advertising space – with cross-device addressability, for example, among many Holy Grails yet to be realized – Millennial’s script is far from written even though the quarterly drumbeat of Wall Street analysis may indicate otherwise.

And in spite of the importance of technology in all this, Barrett knows people matter. It would seem inevitable that more acquisitions are on the way for Millennial as a generation of aging startups look for a home and offer teams of skilled practitioners in return.

 

Must Read

Netflix Boasts Its Best Ad Sales Quarter Ever (Again)

In a livestreamed presentation to investors on Tuesday, co-CEO Greg Peters shared that Netflix had its “best ad sales quarter ever” in Q3, and more than doubled its upfront commitments for this year.

Comic: No One To Play With

Google Pulls The Plug On Topics, PAAPI And Other Major Privacy Sandbox APIs (As The CMA Says ‘Cheerio’)

Google’s aborted cookie crackdown ends with a quiet CMA sign-off and a sweeping phaseout of Privacy Sandbox technologies, from the Topics API to PAAPI.

The Trade Desk’s Auction Evolutions Bring High Drama To The Prebid Summit

TTD shared new details about OpenAds features that let publishers see for themselves whether it’s running a fair auction. But tension between TTD and Prebid hung over the event.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Monopoly Man looks on at the DOJ vs. Google ad tech antitrust trial (comic).

How Google Stands In The DOJ’s Ad Tech Antitrust Suit, According To Those Who Tracked The Trial

The remedies phase of the Google antitrust trial concluded last week. And after 11 days in the courtroom, there is a clearer sense of where Judge Leonie Brinkema is focused on, and how that might influence what remedies she put in place.

The Ad Context Protocol Aims To Make Sense Of Agentic Ad Demand

The AI advertising agents will need their own trade group eventually. For now though, a bunch of companies are forming the Ad Context Protocol, or AdCP.

OUTFRONT Is Using Agencies’ AI Enthusiasm To Spur Wider Programmatic OOH Adoption

The desire for a data-driven reinvention of OOH inspired OUTFRONT to create agentic AI tools for executing and measuring OOH campaigns and comparing OOH to other channels.