Andrew Zeiger, Russ Fradin and Bill Pearce bring decades of innovation and leadership at Del Monte, CNET, Taco Bell and Adify to RichRelevance’s rapidly growing advertising business
SAN FRANCISCO – RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers and brands, today welcomed three seasoned advertising executives to RichRelevance as part of the rapid expansion of the company’s advertising business.
CNET and Ziff Davis veteran and former Chief Revenue Officer of AnchorFree, Andrew Zeiger, has joined RichRelevance as the General Manager of RichRelevance Advertising. The company also named UC Berkeley Haas Business School marketing faculty member and former Taco Bell and Del Monte Foods CMO William “Bill” Pearce and former founder and CEO of Adify, Russ Fradin, to its Board of Advisors. Zeiger, Fradin and Pierce bring decades of executive leadership at major consumer and technology brands, as well as a strong history of driving mass adoption of innovative marketing and digital advertising models.
The high-profile appointments come at a time of tremendous growth for RichRelevance’s advertising solution, Shopping Media. Introduced in December 2010, RichRelevance’s advertising offerings are used by world-class brands like Colgate, 3M, P&G, AT&T, Verizon, Toyota and Cisco to engage shoppers on the world’s largest retail sites, such as Target.com, with custom content while they are researching and purchasing products. The company was honored with an ad:tech Start-Up Showcase Innovation Award in April 2011, and Advertising Age magazine recently credited RichRelevance as an ‘online shopper-marketing juggernaut.’
“In the year since its launch, Shopping Media has emerged as a critical strategy for brands who want to reach consumers online at the point of consideration and purchase,” said RichRelevance CEO David Selinger. “As our advertising business moves into hyper-growth, Andrew, Russ and Bill bring the expertise, leadership and experience we’re looking for as we expand our advertising business and continue to attract innovative, leading brands to our platform. We’re excited to welcome them to the team as we cement our leadership in this emerging market.”
RichRelevance currently serves more than 1.4 billion page views each month across its retail publishers and campaigns have yielded significantly higher engagement rates — double that of traditional rich media ads. Leading retailers have seen a measurable increase of 60-100% in sales lift for the advertised brand’s products as a result of Shopping Media campaigns on their sites.
“RichRelevance combines retail innovation and a performance-driven approach to online advertising,” said Zeiger. “The result is a unique ad offering that is reshaping how brands and agencies engage shoppers online. The results are proven and the potential is enormous. I am very excited to join David and the team as we rewrite the playbook on digital advertising.”
As General Manager of RichRelevance Advertising, Zeiger will be responsible for driving revenue growth and partnering with top global brands to fully leverage the company’s expanding Shopping Media platform. He previously served as executive vice president and Chief Revenue Officer at AnchorFree, where he oversaw the company’s advertising and web services offerings. While at AnchorFree, Zeiger brought the company to profitability for the first time through operational changes, new business models and investments in partnership development after only four months at the organization. Prior to AnchorFree, Zeiger held a number of sales, marketing, and business development executive roles at leading companies including Ziff Davis Media, CNET Networks, and SourceForge (now geeknet).
Bill Pearce is a seasoned executive with broad marketing and general management experience in both the Consumer Products and Consumer Service sectors. Currently, he serves as a faculty member at Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to that he was Chief Marketing Officer of Del Monte Foods where he led a turnaround of that company’s complex portfolio of over 20+ brands.
Before his appointment at Del Monte, he served as Chief Marketing Officer at Taco Bell and spent 11 years at P&G in various marketing and brand leadership functions. He has also led sales efforts at both Coca-Cola and Miller Brewing Company.
“In my experience, the closer you can get to understanding and capitalizing on the consumer decision process, the better you can be as a marketer and advertiser,” said Pearce. “RichRelevance is giving brands unique access to that purchase process and its innovative model is changing the way marketers should think about engagement in the retail environment. I’m thrilled to join the company’s advisory board and look forward to helping shape this exciting, expanding business.”
Russ Fradin is a digital media industry veteran with more than 15 years experience in the online marketing world. As the current CEO and Co-Founder of Dynamic Signal, Fradin helps brands harness the power of brand advocacy through collaborative relationships with influential consumers. Prior to Dynamic Signal Fradin co-founded and was CEO of Adify (acquired by Cox for $300 million in May 2008) and co-founded SocialShield. He previously held executive roles at Wine.com and comScore and was among the first employees at Flycast (acquired by CMGi for $2.3 billion in January 2000).
“The consumer decision making process is rapidly evolving and the lines between retailers and publishers are continuing to converge, making RichRelevance’s position and offerings very exciting,” said Fradin. “Brands are taking notice and RichRelevance has seen great results by innovating how marketers view the ecommerce channel. I’m excited to join the company as they continue to shape this new world of digital advertising.”
Bill and Russ join a distinguished group of prominent brand and marketing executives on the RichRelevance Board of Advisors. Members include David Rosenblatt, chairman of Group Commerce and former CEO of DoubleClick; Josh Jacobs, senior vice president of brand advertising products & marketing at Glam Media and former vice president and general manager of marketing technology at Yahoo!; Ellen Siminoff, former founding executive and senior vice president of Yahoo!; Ken Zinn, director of digital marketing strategy at Abbott Labs and former head of digital marketing at Procter & Gamble; Dan Hickle, former vice president of marketing at PepsiCo; and Larry Tesler an early executive at Apple attributed with driving a user-centric experience.
About RichRelevance
RichRelevance powers personalized shopping experiences for the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands, including Walmart, Sears, Target and others. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalization at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and customer engagement by recommending the most relevant products to consumers regardless of the channel they are shopping. RichRelevance has delivered more than $3 billion in attributable sales for its retail clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of digital advertising called Shopping Media which allows manufacturers to engage shoppers where it matters most – in the digital aisles on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York, Seattle, Boston and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
