• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 1, 2014

BrightRoll is looking to gain a stronger foothold in video advertising to better compete with AOL, Google and Yahoo, hiring three executives who bring a unique perspective. Two of the three hires share the common thread of TV and programmatic experience.

BrightRoll has appointed longtime Google executive Bruce Falck to chief operating officer, and Guy Yalif, Twitter's former global head of product marketing, has been named VP of marketing. Mark Vranesh, former Zynga CFO, has been appointed to the Board of Directors.

Falck will lead the company's growth into programmatic video. He brings strength in global sales and strategy and experience supporting digital marketing and advertising in a variety of roles at Google and DoubleClick since 2008.

While Falck brings to BrightRoll knowledge of programmatic media buying and selling, he also led Google's TV ad efforts, supporting product management for the Google TV Ads Platform. He joined Google as one of the founding members of Google TV in 2006.

As VP of marketing, Yalif will take responsibility for building the BrightRoll brand and fueling growth for the company. He has worked closely with TV networks, brands and agencies on the changing TV landscape.

Earlier this month, comScore released May numbers that position BrightRoll's platform at No. 1 in the May 2014 Top U.S. Online Video Ad Properties Ranking By Percent Reach. The company racked up 51.3% of reach for the total U.S. population, per comScore. About 183.5 million Americans watched online content videos in May 2014. Google Sites ranked as the top video content property, BrightRoll was the top video ad property, and VEVO topped the list of YouTube partner channels.

"Blue Thread with Needle" photo from Shutterstock.