AdBrite, a marketplace for online ads, has hired Ignacio “Iggy” Fanlo as its new CEO to add structure to the company as it expands.
Mr. Fanlo is the former president of Shopping.com, a leading comparison-shopping site. He takes over from AdBrite founder Philip J. Kaplan, who becomes chief product officer but remains chairman.
“We’ve got a company that is growing by leaps and bounds, and we’re ready to take it to the next level in terms of adding structure and more specialization,” Mr. Fanlo said.
AdBrite’s staff has more than doubled in the past year from around 20 to 45 employees. The company expanded its channel formats to cover three new beta programs in banners, mobile and video ads. This adds to its text ad and interstitial offerings.
“When you have a small company, you end up with a lot of people wearing many different hats,” he said. “We’re going to bring in a little more specialization internally to build strong HR and finance departments as well as with our people in sales implementing a project management process with a little more structure.”
Mr. Fanlo has experience with companies in transition. While he was at Shopping.com, the company went public and later was sold to eBay in June 2005. Before that, he was a managing director of both Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan.
He graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor of science in chemical engineering. He and his family live in San Francisco.
The move to AdBrite illustrates Mr. Fanlo’s continuing interest in Internet marketing. According to market researcher comScore Networks, AdBrite’s ads reach 55 million unique users monthly. This figure is up from only 7 million monthly in January 2005.
AdBrite, San Francisco, is an Internet advertising marketplace that works on a similar principal as eBay. Web publishers are connected directly with thousands of advertisers through tools that include serving, scheduling, billing, customer service and sales. Clients include NHL.com and Drudge Report as well as 15,000-plus independent and niche sites and blogs to sell targeted ads.
When Mr. Kaplan founded AdBrite in 2001, the main intent was to let advertisers create their own ads on his site F****dCompany.com. The company has continued to expand since then. Mr. Fanlo’s job is to continue that growth. When asked about expansion, Mr. Fanlo said, “That’s certainly our intention.”
