- Independent blockchain ad platform, Fenestra, set to expand into US market following launch in February earlier this year
- Fenestra appoints Charles Whittingham, former Brightroll Vice President, to lead operations in North America
- Expansion forms part of Fenestra’s strategy to transform the global media and advertising supply chain, with the US a major growth market
London – Fenestra, the independent blockchain ad-trading platform designed to transform the media and advertising buying industries, has appointed Charles Whittingham as President of North America, responsible for leading the start-up’s expansion into the US.
Having announced the company’s launch just two months ago, today’s appointment marks the first major step as part of Fenestra’s global strategy, entering the US as a core market for growth. Fenestra is using Blockchain technology to offer advertisers a more open, transparent transactional model by which to buy, book and pay for advertising space, and aims to bring much needed innovation to the current opaque ad-trading model worldwide. Targeting the global advertising industry, the US offers a significant addressable market and the appointment of Whittingham as President of North America will help Fenestra develop their operations in the region.
Charles – also an active angel investor in technology startups – is a seasoned media and marketing professional with more than 30 years’ experience in the sector, 20 years of which directly with internet start-ups – all of which were successfully acquired or taken public. Previously, Charles was the founding Chief Revenue Office – and fourth employee – of BrightRoll, the internet’s largest digital video advertising network. Having built the sales team from zero to 150+ employees with c.$500m revenues, Charles was part of the management team that successfully sold BrightRoll to Yahoo, which bought the company in December 2014 for $640m.
Earlier in his career, Charles held executive management positions as the Vice President of Sales for Advertising.com (wholly owned subsidiary of AOL and as Regional Vice President of Sales for About.com (owned by the New York Times.
As part of his responsibilities, Charles will lead strategy and implementation for business development, customer acquisition and talent acquisition for Fenestra’s US operations. He will join Fenestra’s founding management team, headed up by Ashley Mackenzie, Kevin Deeley and Richard Mansell – along with a wealth of expert advisers from the technology and advertising sectors.
Following his appointment, Charles Whittingham, comments;
“I have spent a long time in the advertising and media world, and it’s clear change is needed within the current system. Advertisers simply aren’t getting the returns they should, and technology innovation has a major part to play in addressing that.
Fenestra offers a new model that can be genuinely transformative for the entire industry. I’m thrilled to be joining a team with such quality of management leadership, technical expertise and scale of ambition, and am excited to help shape the future growth of the business worldwide.”
Ashley Mackenzie, Fenestra’s Founder and CEO, also adds;
“We’re delighted to welcome Charles to the Fenestra team. His depth and breadth of industry experience, combined with his proven track record as a successful technology entrepreneur makes him the ideal candidate to lead our expansion into the US in the next stage of our journey. The US remains a core market within our sector, and somewhere we see the potential for significant growth.
Charles’ appointment comes at a key point in Fenestra’s development, and we’re looking forward to seeing him supercharge our presence in the US and help build our business into a global proposition.”
