Thursday, February 7, 2013

Gradient X Snags Exec From OpenX

Gradient X, the online mobile marketing and advertising technology developer backed by GRP Partners, Rincon Venture Partners, Crosscut Ventures, Founder Collective, Double M Capital, Baroda Ventures, Siemer Ventures, and others, has snapped up some talent from OpenX with its latest hire. Gradient X said this morning that Stephan Cunningham has been named Vice President of Marketplace Operations, heading up the firm's client, partner and vendor relations, first and third-party data management, inventory packaging and performance optimization.

Cunningham was last overseeing and developing marketplace strategy for the OpenX real-time bidding platform, although Cunningham had actually left OpenX over a year ago. He also had served as Director of Product Management at Yahoo. He was at Overture before it was acquired by Yahoo. The new exec hire bolsters an executive team with deep roots in Southern California's advertising technology market; CEO Brian Baumgart was at Adconion; the firm's CIo is Julie Mattern, formerly chief technologist at Rubicon Project, and the firm's CTO, Michael Lum, was previously head of engineering at OpenX.

Gradient X is developing a predictive bidding and optimization technology used for mobile marketing.

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