In 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.
