Rich media firm EyeWonder Inc. restored John Vincent to the CEO position a year and a half after he ended a four-year run in that capacity.
He succeeds fellow co-founder David Breckling, who shares a seat on the EyeWonder board of directors with Mr. Vincent. Mr. Breckling maintains his board seat, as Mr. Vincent did while Mr. Breckling was CEO.
The Atlanta-based online video and rich media ad agency recently doubled its production staff and opened offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, with a larger office in New York.
“What we’re doing right now is listening to [EyeWonder’s] clients and what they want,” Mr. Vincent said. “We’ve heard two things: They want the ads to be effective, and they want the most reach possible because there are a lot of different browsers out there.”
The company’s newest offering, the AdWonder Flash 8 component, lets advertisers build an interactive ad on desktops and demo it. It minimizes the back and forth between creative agencies and a rich media vendor. Also provided are templates, control buttons and reporting and testing functionality with no additional coding needed.
“We’ve built out our service side so that we can work with creative,” Mr. Vincent said. “We think of ourselves as technology and then very much a service-oriented company. We provide advice and guidance to our customers.”
Along with his position at EyeWonder, Mr. Vincent is an associate board member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. He serves on IAB’s rich media task force, which investigates ways to quantify and create standards for rich media.
“[EyeWonder was] always known for video but we are now supporting all forms of rich media,” he said. “That’s an initiative I’ll be pushing.”
The company plans more growth in the Southeast and Southwest United States as well as more into Europe in the coming year. It also is developing cross-platform applications that let users interact with rich media ads online and receive wireless text messages on their cell phone.
“Rich media is a little bit tricky because there are so many different kinds,” Mr. Vincent said. “Our competitive advantage is that we have the greatest reach.”
