Verve Wireless Nabs comScore CTO Nicotra, Claims 90M Local Mobile Uniques

Chris-Nicotra-hdshtThe ad network that pulls together inventory from thousands of branded local mobile sites, Verve wireless, has grabbed from comScore its CTO Chris Nicotra -- who now will be the company’s CTO/EVP product and technology. With the hire Verve indicates its increased emphasis on developing a tech-driven ad platform for localized mobile campaigns.

“This is part of our ongoing effort to build a world-class management team and experts in location-based mobile advertising," says Verve CEO Tom MacIsaac. Before leading technology at comScore, Nicotra was the CTO at AOL’s Advertising.com, where he met MacIsaac, then Ad.com’s SVP of strategy.

Verve Wireless serves as a publishing platform for about half of its 3,000 local media publishing partners. It provides an ad platform for all partners, including AP, Hearst and McClatchy. MacIsaac says the network now reaches over 90 million uniques a month and serves over 6 billion impressions. About 70% of the campaigns run on the network are location-targeted.

Generally, Verve’s own sales force sells national brand clients and the partner/publishers use their own sales forces to sell to local clients. The company began ramping up national sales in the middle of last year and had seen that part of the business grow 100% quarter over quarter. The larger local publishers are reporting a doubling of their mobile business year-over-year. Verve says its staff now stands at 52 -- also double its size from a year ago.

The technology on the ad platform enables recent national advertisers like Burger King and Radio Shack to target ads locally by localized content dynamically into localized ad units.      

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