Urrutia Joins Fusion To Lead Digital Monetization

Fusion has brought in Jorge Urrutia to its oversee digital monetization efforts.

Urrutia comes from Huffington Post, where he served as vice president of operations, and helped develop the company’s native ad content studio, HuffPost Partner.

Once he gets settled, Urrutia plans to focus squarely on distribution and monetization at the youth-focused news-and-lifestyle cable network.

“We need to continue building our digital footprint via audience and content development partnerships with publishers and platforms that appeal to our millennial audience,” Urrutia said on Monday.

“We call it 'promiscuous content' -- we want to be where our audience is, unconstrained by our Web site,” he explained.  

On the monetization front, Urrutia is interested in branded content that works across video, text, events and documentaries. “Some publishers have bits and pieces of these in their native advertising offerings, but if we are able to build the full stack at scale and for millennials, the opportunity is huge,” he said.

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Launched less than a year ago with the help of Univision and Walt Disney’s ABC News, Fusion is still putting its leadership team into place.

Among other appointments, YouTube and Upworthy veteran Hong Qu recently joined the network as its chief technology officer, while Jezebel founder Anna Holmes recently came on as editor of digital voices and storytelling.

Along with its content offerings, Fusion’s business strategy continues to evolve, according to Urrutia. “A key challenge in the branded content and native advertising world is to find scale,” he said. “We are a new brand, and, while we are seeing promising growth, we still need to increase awareness.”

Prior to HuffPo, Urrutia led the global strategy development team for AOL.

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