Ari Brandt, a media veteran with over 18 years of experience, took on the role of CEO of MediaBrix in May 2011. Previously, he was the CEO of Linkstorm, an advertising technology company, and has also held roles at DoubleClick, Yahoo!, SmartMoney and Condé Nast. We recently spoke with Ari about his role and some of MediaBrix’s recent successes.
The Makegood: You are seasoned in digital media with experience ranging from agency to ad network at companies including MVBMS/Euro RSCG, Yahoo! and DoubleClick. Which role would you say was/is the most challenging and why?
AB: I’ve been very fortunate to have built a career around amazing companies with talented and innovative people. Since I’ve been able to sit on “every side of the desk,” from agency to client to publisher to ad tech, I have a pretty good perspective on the challenges of each role. I think the challenges faced by ad technology companies today are by far the most complex. The speed in which the market is moving, the abundance of innovation and the number of companies being funded has created an extraordinary amount of noise. Rising above the noise to present a clear vision of your company’s value to marketers is extremely challenging.
The Makegood: What is your focus as CEO of MediaBrix?
AB: As with most early stage start-ups, CEOs wear many hats, it’s no different at MediaBrix. My main role is creating the culture of winning, evangelist and setting the vision for the company – then I do a little bit of everything operational: from, senior level sales, strategic partnerships, marketing and product strategy.
The Makegood: Can you tell us about your current products?
AB: MediaBrix has a suite of social ad products that run through our platform and each has driven remarkable success for clients. What I’m most excited to talk about is our Social Flex product, which just launched in Q4. Social Flex units are dynamically populated within social gaming environments (on and off Facebook) to a highly engaged audience. We’ve now run several campaigns for major CPG and consumer electronics clients and the performance has been outstanding. A combination of the ad’s placement with our socially enabled units has translated to interaction rates of over 20% for our brand partners.
The Makegood: MediaBrix recently closed a $4 million Series B round. Can you tell us a little about the products in the pipeline?
AB: First, we’re very pleased to have Edison Ventures back our B Round. Our plans for the funds include making our current suite of products even stronger, expanding the insights and analytics for brands and diving deeper into our mobile solutions.
The Makegood:Thanks, Ari.
