AdViking

OpenX, the company who are applying the RedHat model to an opensource ad server have announced some big company changes today. Including:

1. A new CEO in Tim Cadogan. Cadogan was previously at Yahoo!, where he set the global product strategy for all products in the Yahoo Ad Network and prior to Yahoo! He was also at GoTo/Overture
2. James Bilefield, will be leaving but will continue to be involved as a strategic adviser
3. They are re-locating to Los Angeles

In his blog post, Cadogan writes:

<start shameless recruiting plug :-> In particular, if you are a great, highly motivated technologist interested in working at the intersection of advertising technology, open-source and new advertising business models, we’d love to hear from you.

Does this also mean that Scott Switzer – Co-founder and the CTO will also be leaving soon?

See below for Scott’s comment that he’s at OpenX to stay.

Regardless, AdViking thinks these are some interesting moves and should really strengthen the OpenX proposition further. In particular, with hiring Tim Cadogan, it appears they have snagged an advertising top gun with a very important and strong advertising product legacy - in particular in Search advertising. Maybe an indication of some of the future product direction?

Post-script: With Adify being bought for $300 million, it looks like OpenX could be in the right place, right time to make the most of having made the move to the US.  They key will be to deliver quickly on some of the features that will enable Publishers to quickly maximise their revenue (e.g.:  self-service advertiser UI)