Social network advertising targeter Lotame deepened its bench this week by hiring Adam Lehman (pictured) as chief operating officer. Lehman is responsible for managing day-to-day business operations and driving strategic growth initiatives at the New York startup, which helps brands and publishers monetize online ads by identifying specific audiences through detailed analysis of social media. Lotame founder Andy Monfried, best known for developing Advertising.com, which was acquired by America Online for $435 million, continues in the CEO role.
Lehman, 41, brings to Lotame (prononced low-tuh-mee) a wealth of operational experience and social-media expertise. Some highlights from his resume include founder of investment firm Rock Ridge Ventures, co-founder of GeniusRocket (an online service that helps brands develop viral videos), investor in Wondir (which is similar to Yahoo! Answers) and senior vice president of America Online. (Oh, and he's a reasonably successful playwright too.)
"Lotame focuses on behavior that is unique to social media," says Lehman, when asked how the company is different from the dozens of others that aim to monetize online advertising through social media analytics. "We're developing methodologies and software tools to measure posting, blogging, updating, forwarding and commenting and then we layer on top of those tools more traditional ways to segment audiences, including demographic and geographical data."
It was Andrew Weissman, co-founder of Betaworks, which was an early investor in Lotame, who suggested Lehman for the COO spot. Weissman and Lehman worked together in business development at AOL and are co-investors in Carmun.com, a Web site that helps students and other researchers find information.
When asked what Lehman brings to Lotame, Weissman tells Tech Confidential, "Lotame now needs to scale from a big business to a very, very big business. Adam has done that before."
Weissman, who serves on Lotame's board, says that it is "the only company that looks at this evolving media world and provides value that is consistent with an environment where users are no longer passive but are active on a number of different levels. Lotame was the first to build a platform recognizing this landscape and then providing advertising-related solutions that help marketers."
Lotame is a classic Betaworks portfolio company. "Lotame takes unstructured data (related to user interactions with content) and structures it," says Weissman. "We like companies that do that in a way that adds value to publishers, users or advertisers. Lotame fits in the ad piece of that equation."
Lotame has raised more than $20 million in venture capital, having closed a $13 million Series B in August. That round was led by Emergence Capital Partners (including participation from Battery Ventures and Hillcrest Management) and brought to the board Emergence partner Jason Green, whom Tech Confidential has identified as an early-stage star. Green boasts home-run exits from early investments in online advertising agent DoubleClick Inc., search site Ask Jeeves Inc., digital marketing agent aQuantive Inc. and Internet software maker Visual Networks Inc.
A deep bench indeed. -- Mary Kathleen Flynn
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