Ad tech leader staffs up to support company growth and innovation
LOS ANGELES – The Rubicon Project, the leading advertising technology company for the comScore 500, welcomes Brian Pike, the former Chief Technology Officer for Ticketmaster, one of the world’s largest and most complex exchanges, as Chief Technology Officer at the Rubicon Project. Also joining the Rubicon Project executive team are former Ticketmaster Deputy General Counsel Victoria von Szeliski as General Counsel and former Yahoo VP of Product Management John Slade as SVP of Product Management.
As CTO, Pike will manage the engineering, product management and technical operations teams that drive innovation and execution of Rubicon Project’s real-time trading platform, REVV. REVV enables comScore 500 publishers to connect with buyers and sell ad inventory in real time. REVV processes 1.2 trillion bids and powers 150 billion ad trades each month. To support this unprecedented volume of real-time transactions, Pike will be responsible for continuing to scale the company’s high-performance, high-availability Real-Time Cloud with hardware, software, data and network architectures.
“Brian brings us his experience at Ticketmaster operating and scaling a massive trading system,” said Frank Addante, CEO and Founder of the Rubicon Project. “He led a global team of 700 technologists that engineered very sophisticated pricing and trading algorithms at scale, and implemented fraud prevention and rules management technologies to protect buyers and sellers. His expertise will have a direct impact, bringing a greater level of maturity to real-time ad trading.”
“I chose to join the Rubicon Project because very few companies in the world have had the scale to process trillions of trades with such algorithmic complexity in less than 30 milliseconds per transaction,” said Pike. “I will apply my knowledge of how to build a large-scale trading infrastructure with international demands to strengthen Rubicon’s position as the advertising technology leader. I look forward to extending our trading platform’s capabilities into markets such as mobile and video.”
As General Counsel, von Szeliski will oversee all legal initiatives, business affairs and compliance matters. Ms. von Szeliski has extensive experience with large-scale, publicly traded companies, having begun her legal career with the international law firm of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. Von Szeliski also has broad political and campaign operations experience, having been elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and served in senior positions with Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee.
“I am extremely excited to be joining the Rubicon Project at this stage of the company’s maturity,” said von Szeliski. “Rubicon has been very aggressive in pursuing its mission to automate the buying and selling of digital advertising. The company has proven its ability to leverage its scale, market share and financial strength to accelerate its vision and footprint through the three technology acquisitions it has already completed. I will focus on applying the experience I have gained with companies that have pursued similar growth paths.”
SVP of Product Management Slade was an early pioneer of automation technology at Overture, and worked with an experienced display ad team at Yahoo. He managed a wide range of publisher technologies, from ad serving platforms to exchanges such as RightMedia. As SVP of Product, Slade will be responsible for leading the technology development and product releases that continue to enable comScore 500 publishers to capture the most revenue possible for their inventory, safely.
This story appeared first in MediaPost.
About Rubicon Project
The Rubicon Project launched in 2007 with a mission to automate buying and selling across the $80 billion global online advertising industry. REVV, the company’s real-time trading platform, has executed nearly two trillion trades for more than 450 of the largest properties on the Internet including 1/3 of the comScore 500. REVV helps comScore 500 publishers like Time Inc., Guardian News & Media and CareerBuilder make more money by automating and optimizing their advertising sales business, safely. Today, REVV processes more than 1 trillion bids resulting in more than 150 billion trades each month from more than 70,000 advertisers purchasing through 700 buying channels (ad networks, exchanges and DSPs). Ad buyers turn to REVV for single point real-time access to the #2 network reach of users (as ranked by comScore) across premium inventory and audiences.
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