SAN FRANCISCO, April 5, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LookSmart, Ltd. (Nasdaq:LOOK), an online search advertising solutions company, announced the appointment of Vincent Granville, Ph.D., as Chief Scientist, effective today. In this newly created role, Dr. Granville will lead LookSmart's internet traffic optimization initiative, with the goal of increasing the overall performance of the Ad Network for the benefit of both its publisher and advertiser bases. Dr. Granville will report directly to Dr. Jean-Yves Dexmier, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
Dr. Granville brings to LookSmart more than ten years of experience in predictive modeling, data mining, machine learning applied to Internet search technology, keyword and business intelligence, online advertising, web analytics, fraud detection, market research. Dr. Granville is the founder of AnalyticBridge, the largest analytic social network, and has served as Principal since February, 2008. Over the last few years, Dr. Granville developed automated bidding systems and an Internet traffic scoring platform for leading ad networks, advertisers and publishers. Dr. Granville also served as a consultant to Microsoft for the Metrics group of Bing.com, where he worked on detecting change points and outliers for user engagement metrics. Prior to that, he was Chief Science Officer at Authenticlick, where he prototyped click scoring solutions for search engines, ad networks and advertisers. Before Authenticlick, Dr. Granville served as Fraud Detection Statistician at InfoSpace, where he implemented click fraud solutions to process billions of clicks, queries and impressions. While at InfoSpace, he was also involved with keyword taxonomy improvement, keyword analytics and keyword clustering.
Dr. Granville earned a Ph.D. in Statistics summa cum laude from University Notre-Dame de la Paix, Namur, Belgium, in Bayesian Filtering of Digital Images. He completed his post-doctoral work at Cambridge University, UK and was a member of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, based in North Carolina. Dr. Granville's work has been published in numerous mathematics and statistics journals, he was a finalist at the Belgian Mathematical Olympiads, finalist at the Wharton School Business Plan Competition, and owns patents on web traffic scoring.
"We are excited that Vincent is joining the LookSmart team," said Dr. Jean-Yves Dexmier, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "With his deep mathematical and statistical knowledge combined with his data mining experience in our industry, Vincent is the ideal candidate to improve our data mining and traffic optimization. We believe that adding strong talent will enable us to successfully execute on our strategic initiatives and capitalize on the increasing demand in the search advertising market."
Dr. Granville stated, "I am pleased to join the management team of LookSmart as Chief Scientist. I believe LookSmart has very valuable assets and has a strong platform to deliver improved results and unlock the inherent value in the business."
About LookSmart
LookSmart is an online search advertising network solutions company that provides performance solutions for online search advertisers and online publishers. LookSmart offers advertisers targeted, pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising and contextual search advertising via its Advertiser Networks; and an Ad Center platform for customizable private-label advertiser solutions for online publishers. LookSmart is based in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit http://www.looksmart.com/ or call 415-348-7500.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, such as references to our business prospects. These statements, including their underlying assumptions, are subject to risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. Results may differ due to various factors such as the possibility that our efforts to control expenses may not be successful, that our efforts to increase revenue and improve gross margin may not succeed, that we may be unable to gain or maintain customer acceptance of our publisher solutions or ad backfill products, that existing and potential customers for our products may opt to work with, or favor the products of, others due to more favorable products or pricing terms, that we may be limited in our ability or unable to retain and grow our ad and customer base, and that we may be limited in our ability to, or be unable to, enhance our products or our network of distribution partners. Additional risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected are discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2009. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect management's analysis only as of the date hereof.
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