• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 8, 2010

George Bell is probably best-known as the CEO of pioneering Web portal Excite, and later as chief executive of Excite@Home, following the merger of Excite and cable broadband service @Home. But Bell also founded The Outdoor Life Network (now cable channel Versus Network), has served as an executive at Times Mirror Magazines and was chief executive of college savings platform Upromise before joining Boston-based venture capital firm General Catalyst.

Now Bell is tackling another emerging medium -- mobile -- taking over as CEO of mobile ad network JumpTap, a General Catalyst portfolio company. Founded in 2004, JumpTap has received about $70 million total in venture funding to date from General Catalyst and other investors, according to CrunchBase. Bell is taking over the helm of JumpTap. Online Media Daily talked to him about the new job, the mobile ad business, and what the future holds for his new company.

What's behind the timing of your stepping in as CEO of JumpTap now?

Bell: I don't think there's any magic moment, but in the larger arc, the first five years of the company's history under Dan Olschwang were focused on technology and product development and business model refinement. As mobile advertising grows and continues to be more broadly adopted and moves toward the mainstream consumer, I think the board of JumpTap -- which I did not sit on until last week -- led me to the conclusion that it would be great if someone with more of a media and marketing background moved to the helm of the company.

I think if you look at the skill set to drive JumpTap to the next level, it's certainly going to be built off the back of the technologies that have built mobile so far. But you have to start to think about what new advertisers -- what new agencies -- come into this market, and how they allocate spending when they have other competitive media choices. I think having more of an advertising and media sensibility will probably be helpful to the company in this next phase of its growth.

You took a leave of absence from General Catalyst to run JumpTap. Will you be a full-time CEO?

Bell: I'm full-time at the company. I have kept one board seat and one observer seat from my life at General Catalyst and shed all my other board commitments, and I've also put up a sign that says I'm no longer available to consider or consult on new investments. So I'm onboard in every dimension and here to see JumpTap through to as far as I can take it.

Given the acquisitions of AdMob and Quattro Wireless in the last year, and rumors of other mobile ad network deals, there's been speculation you might be coming on board to help find a buyer for JumpTap. Can you comment on that?

Bell: Am I here to put JumpTap up for a quick sale? The answer is no. I believe that the two deals that occurred in the market were great; both the AdMob and Quattro sales were very good. The market has done nothing but grow since then. And the number of companies that might consider JumpTap to be an important part of their picture is increasing. So I feel no urgency about this -- and I certainly have enjoyed, in these first few days, to return to the operating environment again with smart people and a lot of things to figure out. But the idea here is not for a quick sale; it's not why I came.

Would you rule out an acquisition if the right deal came along?

Bell: I wouldn't rule out anything, but I'm not specifically looking for a short sale.

Do you have any specific goals for your first 90 days?

Bell: The first one is assessment -- just trying to get an understanding of the assets here, the people, positioning in the market, technology, platforms etcetera. So at first it's just absorbing a lot and learning. Second will be to clearly redefine and sharpen our messages to the market -- who we are, how we're differentiated, what we stand for. And third will be lining up the people and products behind that, or realigning things internally, if necessary, to deliver on our messages and strategy.

What's the overall strategy for JumpTap?

Bell: We need to make it easy for agencies and marketers to buy JumpTap, experiment with mobile in their buys, understand their campaigns -- that it's different than what they've been doing, it's different than the Web. So we want to make JumpTap a very easy on-ramp toward new dollars coming into this market.

Second, I believe we need to make buyers, advertisers, agencies and publishers, and our carrier partners including AT&T, feel smart about their buys. And I think feeling smart is going to depend on what we can do to leverage our own data and third-party data to create the best platform for the delivery of targeted messages.

How do you assess the impact of Apple's launch of iAd on the mobile ad market?

Bell: Anytime a company of Apple's brand and product power gets behind the mobile platform in the general sense, it's validating for big media spenders -- agencies and advertisers alike -- who want to see it as an important part of their future. So that's very good. To the extent to which Apple persists with their pricing strategies around iAd, that may represent opportunities for other players who happen to be, like JumpTap, more flexible.

Having started Excite in the mid-1990s, do you see similarities between the early days of the Internet and where mobile is now?

Bell: I see a couple of similarities. The first is sort of the evangelical nature of these things when they start. You spend a lot of time describing why this transition is a tectonic one. I actually think this is a little easier because so many people own and use a mobile device of one kind or other already. So it's different from where we were in 1995 and 1996, when we had to explain a browser and a search engine to many people who had never used one.

The second is education. What you're trying to overcome, with people who might spend money with us, is ultimately intimidation. You have to learn new terminology, you have to learn new ways to measure ROI. What are the unique properties are of a mobile device I should be taking advantage of for targeting purposes and getting the right message to the right person on the right device? How do you measure campaigns across hundreds of devices? All of these things remain to be determined and are currently in a state of experiment.

That all seems like a very close analogy to where things were on the Web in the late 90s as well. A lot of marketers wanted to spend money on the Web, but they were intimidated. So I do think that mobile planners who can take the intimidation out of this for buyers will be well positioned.