• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 10, 2013

Setting off a series of IPO rumors, the native ad specialists at Outbrain have named Jeff Davison as chief financial officer.

Previously, as CFO of RightNow Technologies, Davison is credited with shepherding the customer experience software maker through its own IPO -- and later, its $1.8 billion sale to Oracle.

“Jeff is joining the company at a pivotal moment,” Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai stated. Galai also cited the importance of Davison’s “deep experience at both public and private companies.” Neither Galai or Outbrain representatives would address the IPO rumors on Tuesday.

Riding a wave of interest in “native advertising,” Outbrain gives online publishers a platform for recommending content links with the hope of increasing traffic and page views.

Founded in 2006, Outbrain also promises to better monetize publishers’ content pages by leveraging recommended links to third-party content. Outbrain publishing partners include USA Today, The Daily Beast, Ziff Davis, iVillage, Slate and Univision Interactive.

One obvious obstacle for Outbrain is the bad reputation that native advertising has for populating publishers’ sites with inferior content and shady marketing practices.

Addressing the issue, Outbrain recently said it rejects 50% of all the “content” submitted by marketers, and entered into a partnership with BillGuard. Using the transaction monitoring and resolution provider’s platform, Outbrain said it would be able to identify and remove crooked merchants from its network -- particularly those that target unsuspecting consumers with unwanted credit-card charges.

Prior to RightNow, Davison was the controller for Powerhouse Technologies, a multinational, publicly held technology and manufacturing company with more than $200 million in revenues and approximately 1,800 employees.