140 Proof Hires Industry Veteran Ed Darmanin as New CRO

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- 140 Proof, the leading social advertising company, today announced that Ed Darmanin has joined the company as its new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). As CRO, Darmanin will be responsible for all aspects of 140 Proof's revenue performance as well as advancing the company's long-term strategy to generate and retain revenue across multiple channels.

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Darmanin joins 140 Proof during a period of rapid growth. Since the beginning of the year, the company has grown advertising reach over 100%, launched new social ad solutions for Pinterest and expanded its native ads into social sites and blogging platforms such as Tumblr and WordPress.

140 Proof is the only company to target social ads based on the "Blended Interest Graph", an index of people's interests and follower relationships across multiple social platforms. Assessing users' interests based on activity across multiple social platforms enables 140 Proof to identify large, desirable audiences like "Sustainability Moms" or "Car Customizers" and target them with highly relevant ads and brand content. Adding more types of interest data not only makes targeting more accurate but also increases potential audience size.

"140 Proof has a unique asset in the Blended Interest Graph, and it allows us to serve many kinds of customers, including technology companies who want to license these big data insights, advertising exchanges, and large brand advertisers. We're looking to Ed to help us accelerate adoption of this technology across new and existing channels," said 140 Proof CEO and co-founder Jon Elvekrog. "Ed Darmanin is known in the industry as a major force, someone who has grown sales from nothing to hundreds of millions. Ed joining us as CRO is another feather in our cap and a big strategic win for the company. We're thrilled to welcome him."

Darmanin joins 140 Proof as an experienced sales leader, who has been building digital products and sales teams since 1998. As Vice President of Sales for The Weather Channel, Darmanin helped match their unique audience with brand advertisers. And as Senior Vice President of Global Ad Sales at AccuWeather, he revamped the sales team and revenue strategy, focusing on top 100 advertisers, to spur audience growth across mobile, tablet and desktop.

Previously, Darmanin was on the sales team at Fox Cable Networks, helping with the re-launch of FX. Darmanin graduated from the University of Delaware, and got his start in the media business with DDB Needham's buying team as a specialist in national TV, Radio and Syndication.

About 140 Proof
140 Proof is the leading social advertising service, providing brand advertisers an effective way to reach millions of consumers primed to discover and share. The company delivers relevant, native, sharable ads across millions of social sites and apps connected via the Blended Interest Graph. 140 Proof's Blended Interest Graph targeting matches ads to audiences based on public social cues such as who a user follows and keywords that a user sees. The solution is optimized for social and includes native social, IAB standard, and rich-media ad units. 140 Proof is headquartered in San Francisco and has additional field offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Detroit.

SOURCE 140 Proof