• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 30, 2012

Mobile ad network InMobi on Tuesday announced the hiring of former Google executive Crid Yu as vice president and managing director for North America. The move reflects InMobi’s efforts to build its business in the region over the last two years after establishing footprints in Asia, Africa and Europe.

“North America is one of the fastest-growing regions at InMobi—both in terms of revenue and personnel. Crid’s experience of growing transformational businesses will enable us to accelerate the phenomenal growth we have seen in North America," stated Naveen Tewari, CEO and Founder, InMobi.

Yu was most recently SVP, strategic partnerships at Demand Media. Prior to that, he held senior management positions at Google during his eight-year tenure at the search giant, including being responsible for the top 1,000 strategic partners in the company’s U.S. display business, as well as leading operations in China, Hong Kong, and Korea.

Prior to his roles with Demand Media and Google, Yu led business development for Philips Semiconductors and was a management consultant at McKinsey.

With Yu’s hiring at InMobi, Anne Frisbie, formerly head of North America for the company, has taken on a new post as vice president and general manager of global supply. In that role, she’ll work with Yu and the company’s other regional leaders around the world.

Among its latest steps to expand in North America, InMobi in July made a pair of acquisitions: buying Metaflow Solutions, which makes mobile content management software used by developers and publishers, and MMTG Labs, which provides a white label service for creating branded app stores.

InMobi, which has its U.S. quarters in San Francisco, now has 120 employees overall in North America. The company says its mobile ad network serves 93.4 million impressions monthly and reaches 578 million people across 165 countries. Its North American audience stands at 119 million. InMobi’s investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and SoftBank.