Elsewhere: Jon Curnow Joins aiMatch as Director of Product

aiMatch announced today that Jon Curnow has joined the team as director of product. Jon will spearhead the company’s product development efforts to ensure its advertising intelligence solutions continue to meet the needs of publishers around the globe.

Press Release: Jon Curnow Joins aiMatch as Director of Product

RALEIGH, NC, July 29, 2010: aiMatch announced today that Jon Curnow has joined the team as director of product. Jon will spearhead the company’s product development efforts to ensure its advertising intelligence solutions continue to meet the needs of publishers around the globe. Jon has more than 13 years of experience in the online advertising industry, and joins the fast growing team of industry experts at aiMatch including executives Jeff Wood, Guy Taylor, Ryan Treichler, Steve Perks and Chris Hanburger.

Based in the UK, Jon most recently served as head of product management for Experian Digital Advertising. There, he was responsible for defining product requirements for the European launch of Experian’s addressable advertising products with major European portals. Working across multiple business groups, he also defined technical requirements, coordinated data management processes, and developed work-flow and ad-platform integrations with clients to successfully deliver audience targeting products.

Prior to Experian, Jon worked with many of his aiMatch colleagues at Microsoft Advertising, Atlas Europe, Accipiter Solutions, and Engage. Throughout his online advertising career, he developed online advertising solutions for new platforms including mobile, television, gaming and outdoor environments. He also served as an evangelist for emerging media platforms to publishers, advertisers and media/creative agencies. For years, Jon has provided European product expertise and direction and contributed to the  development and execution of EMEA strategy for these leading online advertising technology companies. He has also held positions at Dynamic Logic and IPC Media.

“I’m excited to rejoin my former colleagues at a company that’s so focused on delivering cutting-edge solutions to help digital media owners better understand – and control – their online advertising business,” said Jon. “It’s also a great opportunity to work with an experienced team of experts who are leading ad platform innovation and development.”

“Jon’s experience includes roles in nearly every aspect of online advertising, giving him a unique and powerful perspective of the entire online advertising ecosystem,” said Jeff Wood, aiMatch CEO. “That experience will enable him to work with our customers to make sure they get the most out of their online advertising technology investment.”

aiMatch has created a single, comprehensive solution for publishers to create, forecast, model, deliver and analyze online advertising products. aiMatch delivers advanced advertising intelligence tools to help customers manage sales performance and analyze the data that impacts revenue, and to take intelligent action based on that data. aiMatch overcomes the limitations of traditional ad serving solutions by enabling the analysis of unlimited amounts of data, ranging from the very simple to the extremely complex, and making that data actionable.

About aiMatch

Founded by a team of online advertising technology experts who have been entrenched in the industry since its inception, aiMatch is dedicated to putting advertising intelligence (ai)  in the hands of online publishers, helping them create new and better defined audiences, create new revenue opportunities, and maximize the value of their advertising inventory.

At aiMatch we understand that premium, guaranteed inventory is a publisher’s primary online advertising asset. That is why the aiMatch solution equips publishers with a comprehensive platform to help them make intelligent decisions. We solve the complexity of business intelligence, forecasting, simulation and delivery with unprecedented and scalable capabilities that match the best use of a publisher’s online advertising inventory.

aiMatch connects insight to action, enabling users to view and interact with data in the “big picture” – to be proactive and effective in inventory placement, packaging and pricing. For more information, visit www.aimatch.com.

Who Might Market Digital Radio?

Where is the business with the marketing savvy, financial muscle and experience in creating compelling, must-see programming (or content)? Well, News International was one such business and it appears to be saying it’s not interested any more.

I don’t write about radio very much, which is probably a good thing. I tend to leave it to people who are actively involved in the business and are up on the workings of today’s radio industry. Admittedly, when it came to posting this I re-published some of my older radio memories that I pulled in from a blog that died years go.

Anyway, radio remains to me the best of all the media: intimate, personal and accessible yet ultimately shared, social and everywhere. I once wrote – and now re-posted – about my passion for radio but, looking at it now, I don’t think it does the medium justice.

Occasionally, however, I do get to bash my keyboard and crank out the occasional comment – the last one being on Matt Degan’s excellent radio-related blog (and reproduced here) where I tried to say that, for an entertainment industry, commercial radio is woefully bad at presenting itself well. Reading last week’s Daily Express article on the great FM switch-off just goes to show how bad the industry is at marketing itself. Somebody, other than the radio industry, is setting the radio agenda. And I do believe that matters. Some internal industry bickering about the digital switch-over quickly turns, via little lobbying, into another government white paper and the news industry gets to bash Ministers in bold headlines and swirling TV graphics.

So, in scanning the papers earlier I noticed a Guardian piece on News International’s closure of SunTalk. Now, I’ve never listened to it so I can’t comment on the programming but John Gaunt is an excellent broadcaster (you certainly don’t have to agree with his opinions to think that) and I am sure it was cleverly positioned. Relaying on FM to some ex-pats in Spain is a stroke of marketing genius that still makes me smile.

And therein lies the root of my disappointment. News International would have breathed some fresh marketing air into a medium that I regard above others and would have been bold, brash and – I’m sure – would have unsettled many. Regardless of what you may think about their cross-media ownership, NI’s reach in the press and on television would have given digital radio the profile boost it needs (to say nothing of how it might have impacted programming). They poured money to create the satellite television market and they could have, similarly, helped the digital radio cause. For those concerned about the increasing power of News International well, in radio, they would not have controlled the platform or access to it, but they might have had money to spend to add programming diversity and build audience awareness.

If digital radio is to grow and be accepted in the UK then something big – and I think it’s got to be enormous – needs to happen. Yes, the BBC will play its part but, while I am happy for the BBC to tell me about their services, I don’t want my licence fee spent on advertising for commercial businesses. The market may a little unfair but it’s the one we have; it’s been here for decades because it’s better than most alternatives and – generally – drives great programming, but I do not pay my licence fee to subsidise privately-held companies or increase the share value of a plc. And I say this as somebody who, podcasts aside, almost exclusively listens to UK commercial radio (with a bit of international Jack FM thrown in).

So where is the business with the marketing savvy, financial muscle and experience in creating compelling, must-see/hear programming (or content)? Well, News International was one such business and it appears to be saying it’s not interested any more.

I think it’s an opportunity missed.