Industry veterans see huge potential for Vizu’s real-time brand advertising measurement and optimization technology
San Francisco – Vizu Corporation (www.vizu.com), a San Francisco-based company providing a real-time online brand ad effectiveness measurement platform, today announced that David Bell, Advisor/Investor and Chairman Emeritus at Interpublic Group, and Alan Gould, Executive in Residence at Greycroft Partners venture capital and former co-CEO of IAG Research, have joined Vizu’s Board of Directors.
“I am extremely impressed with how rapidly Vizu is becoming the currency of communication for online brand advertising measurement,” says Mr. Bell. “Vizu’s technology is reshaping the way we think about promoting brands online, to the benefit of everyone involved – for the first time advertisers and their partners in the digital media ecosystem can collaborate directly to optimize the performance of their brand advertising campaigns.”
“In Vizu, I see many of the best aspects of IAG, and I expect Vizu to achieve a dominant position in digital media measurement,” adds Mr. Gould. “Vizu represents the first truly scalable solution for brand advertisers in the digital media arena.”
“Having led the rapid growth of major media companies, David and Alan bring highly relevant experience to Vizu,” says Dan Beltramo, Vizu CEO. “Each has a deep understanding of what it takes to build systems and companies that serve brand advertisers.”
Mr. Bell has extensive experience in the marketing services sector having been CEO of three major industry companies: Bozell Worldwide, True North Communications, and The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. The various positions Mr. Bell held at Bozell Worldwide led to his becoming its CEO, where he became a major factor in building the company from a $12 million company to one worth over $600 million, making it one of the ten largest global agencies. Mr. Bell was named CEO of True North, the fourth largest agency holding group, following its acquisition of Bozell.
Following the acquisition of True North by The Interpublic Group, he was named CEO of this second largest agency holding group with 44,000 employees and nearly $7 billion in revenue. The shareholder value of both companies increased by over 50% in each case.
Mr. Bell is the only industry executive to lead most major industry associations including The American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Advertising Federation, The Ad Council, and The Advertising Educational Foundation.
Mr. Gould served as CEO of Advertiser Solutions – a business unit of The Nielsen Company that provides end-to-end marketing solutions to large and global advertisers – from May 2008 to November 2010. In 2000, he founded IAG Research and built the company into the leading provider of engagement metrics in the television industry. Mr. Gould served as its co-CEO until the company was acquired by Nielsen in May 2008 for $250 million. As co-CEO, Mr. Gould was involved in all aspects of IAG’s product development, sales, and ongoing financing.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Gould worked as a campaign manager and communications consultant for various candidates for public office.
Other Vizu Corporation board members include Dan Beltramo, company CEO, Co-Founder, and Chairman of the Board, Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Joe Davis, former CEO of Coremetrics.
Vizu Corporation (www.brandlift.com) brings the same metrics used to measure and optimize brand advertising effectiveness in the offline world to the online medium. By providing the first real-time, enterprise technology platform that allows brand advertisers and their partners in the digital media ecosystem – publishers, ad networks, exchanges, and demand side platforms – to collaborate around measuring and optimizing Brand Lift metrics, Vizu enables its customers to move their target audience through the purchase funnel, from building awareness to creating intent and preference. Vizu’s brand advertising effectiveness platform is used by over 60% of Advertising Age’s Top 100 Brand Advertisers and Comscore’s Top 50 Media properties to support all key aspects of the advertising lifecycle, from audience profiling to campaign measurement and benchmarking.
