Yahoo alum to run Web ad challenger
OpenX marks the new spot for former Yahoo Inc. executive Tim Cadogan, who is taking over as chief executive of the advertising start-up and plans to move its headquarters from London to Pasadena.
Cadogan, 37, is a key hire for OpenX, which is backed by such prominent venture capital firms as Accel Partners and Index Ventures. He spent five years at Yahoo, most recently as a senior vice president.
He was instrumental in the launch of Yahoo’s souped-up search advertising system. He joined from GoTo.com, which was renamed Overture Services Inc. in 2001 and bought by Yahoo in 2003.
Cadogan is one of a growing number of executives leaving the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet company as it faces an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft Corp. He left Yahoo in February, despite being offered a promotion, a person familiar with the situation said.
Another recent departure: Yahoo Music executive Ian Rogers, who last week was named CEO of music start-up Topspin Media, which has offices in San Francisco and Santa Monica.
Former Yahoo executive James Bilefield, who was running OpenX, will take an advisory role at the company.
OpenX, which changed its name from OpenAds, is developing a free, open-source platform the company says serves more than 250 billion ads a month to 100,000 websites. The motto of the company, which targets small to medium-size publishers, is “Take control of your advertising.”
“It’s something I haven’t seen before in advertising,” Cadogan said in a phone interview from London.
It makes money by charging ad networks access to its community of more than 30,000 website publishers in more than 100 countries.
Like many advertising start-ups, OpenX is seeking to swipe some of the $40-billion Web advertising market dominated by Google Inc. It will have a tougher time now that Google has completed its purchase of DoubleClick Inc., which also offers software that lets publishers control when, where and how ads are served.
OpenX has raised $21 million in funding since 2007. Its new chairman, former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller, says OpenX can challenge larger ad networks by giving publishers more control. Miller helped prepare AOL to make the transition to advertising from providing dial-up Web access.
“OpenX shows how these kinds of models are scaling very differently than traditional models by leveraging the open-source community,” said Miller, a partner in the Velocity Interactive Group. “This is a whole turn of the wheel in the industry.”
The challenge proved irresistible to Cadogan, who has spent a decade helping shape the future of advertising, said Andrew Braccia, a former Yahoo executive now with Accel.
OpenX has three dozen employees, including 20 in London and a dozen in Poland. It plans to set up in Pasadena so it can tap Caltech’s talent.
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