Rocket Fuel Hires New CMO, Ups Programmatic TV Efforts

Programmatic/ad tech company Rocket Fuel has hired a new chief marketing officer: Eric Duerr. He was previously the chief executive officer of Emphatic, a digital marketing agency. He had also worked at Adobe, Microsoft and GoDaddy.


Duerr believes his job is to make it easier for marketing and agencies to access Rocket Fuel’s transitioning brand identity, where “blend ad tech meets marketing tech,” he told Media Daily News.

Major efforts will be to communicate Rocket Fuel’s “Moment Scoring” predictive technology, as well as the company’s new programmatic TV efforts. Recently, Rocket Fuel and Dish Network completed a six-week programmatic TV deal with Glenfiddich, the big single-malt Scotch whiskey brand, and agency Resolute Media.

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Rocket Fuel is currently in beta with advertising inventory from Dish Media Sales available to select Rocket Fuel customers. The platform is expected to launch broadly to all of Rocket Fuel customers in early 2016.

For the most recent third-quarter 2015 reporting period, Rocket Fuel revenues grew 10% to $111.8 million with net losses expanding to $135.6 million from $22.8 million.

The company, which witnessed its stock steadily dropping over the past year -- to $3.43 on Thursday from over $14 in February 2015 -- continues to have profitability challenges, according to industry analysts.

Currently, about 70% of Rocket Fuel’s revenues come from working with direct-response advertisers, company officials say.

Rocket Fuel has had some senior executive changes recently. Duerr will be taking over the chief marketing officer’s post that was held by Eric Porres, who went to Sailthru, email/personalization software company, in September.

Duerr comes to the company after Randy Wootton took over as the CEO of Rocket Fuel in November. Wootton had been chief revenue officer of Rocket Fuel since March 2015, coming to the company from Salesforce.

George John, chairman/CEO and co-founder of Rocket Fuel, left the company in March 2015.

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