Contact Information: Press Contact: Jason Throckmorton or Corey Lewis LaunchSquad (415) 625-8555 mochimedia@launchsquad.com
George Garrick Named CEO and Chairman of Mochi Media
Veteran Executive and Online Advertising Pioneer to Lead Fast-Growing Online Game Advertising Company's Next Phase of Growth
| Source: Mochi Media
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - November 13, 2008) - Mochi Media today announced that George
Garrick has been named Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board.
Mochi Media's co-founder and former CEO Jameson Hsu, led the CEO search,
and will continue to focus on product development while leading
collaboration between the company, the game development community,
publishers and advertisers in the newly created role of Chief Mochi.
Garrick is a pioneer in online advertising, having served as CEO of Flycast
Communications where he led the company's IPO and subsequent sale to CMGI
in 2000 for more than $2 billion. Flycast was one of the first direct
response online ad networks and re-defined the standard model for Internet
advertising. Garrick has previously served as CEO of Jingle Networks,
operator of 1-800-FREE-411, helping to raise $70 million in funding,
increase revenue and valuation, and putting the company on track to quickly
become profitable, as well as Wine.com and PlaceWare, which was acquired by
Microsoft. Earlier in his career, George was North American CEO of
Information Resources, Inc.
Hsu led the search for a new CEO after a year of strong growth for Mochi
Media. In 2008, the reach of MochiAds, Mochi Media's advertising and game
distribution network, has grown to 70 million unique users per month across
a catalog of more than 5000 games. The company also introduced MochiAds For
Publishers, a free service that allows publishers to search, add and make
money from the company's catalog of high quality games. Most recently,
Mochi Media teamed with Google to expand the reach of its recently launched
AdSense for Games offering. Garrick joins recent executive hires Eric Boyd,
former vice president of platform engineering at Yahoo!, and Carol Werner,
former vice president of sales at MySpace, to round out Mochi Media's
senior leadership team and position the company for the next phase of
growth.
"More than a third of Internet users go online to play games and that
number will only continue to grow as game quality and sophistication
improve and the online game audience expands across all demographics," said
Garrick. "Mochi Media is the only company that offers valuable resources
for everyone involved in online gaming -- a platform for developers to
distribute and make money from their games, a new way for publishers to
drive and better monetize traffic and a way for advertisers to reach large
numbers of highly engaged consumers through games. The online gaming market
will grow exponentially in the coming months and Mochi Media is well
positioned to both fuel and capitalize on that growth."
"This is a very exciting time for Mochi Media," Hsu said. "Adding George to
our team brings a new level of leadership and experience to the company.
His work with Flycast forged a new direction in online advertising that is
very similar to what Mochi Media is doing in the online games space --
breaking new ground and creating value for advertisers, publishers and a
host of complementary players in the space. As we enter 2009, we're
confident that the team, technology and traction we've built will set the
stage for continued growth and help online games emerge as the next big
channel for online marketers."
About Mochi Media
Mochi Media is a platform dedicated to fueling the creativity of the gaming
community through its products and services. The core product, MochiAds, is
the largest online games advertising network for developers, advertisers
and publishers. The network provides game developers with monetization,
distribution and analytics while providing advertisers with turnkey
opportunities to reach over 70 million unique users per month. The
thousands of online games available in the game catalog provide publishers
with engaging content to entertain and monetize their users. Mochi Media is
headquartered in downtown San Francisco and funded by Accel Partners and
Shasta Ventures.