Rovio has announced that it has hired Betsy Flounders Novak as the company’s director of the West and Midwest. The veteran of MTV and ESPN will be joined in America by Matt Pfeffer who will be director of the East Coast, leaving a position at the mobile ad company Millennial Media.
“The model of simply placing standard display ads in online and mobile properties is not necessarily strategic for the majority of tier one brands, and that model was in need of disruption,” said Michele Tobin, head of North American brand advertising partnerships. “Rover’s fan-first approach and engaged audience creates more native, integrated advertising experiences that more closely align to brands’ overall marketing goals.”
Rovio has also hired Todd Tran as head of the European and Asia Pacific brand partnership ad team. The former EMEA general manager of Apple’s mobile advertising business will be joined by Nokia and inMobi veteran Raphaelle Tripet.
“Brands and agencies in Europe and Asia want to work directly with scalable, next generation media companies, in unique ways,” said Tran. “As a media platform, we have now achieved tier-one global reach and we have an opportunity to really pioneer true integrated cross platform brand experiences.”
Rovio says these hires will help the company as it transitions to focusing on digital advertising. The company says that Angry Birds has become an appealing advertising target for other brands now that it has over 263 million MAUs as of December 2012.
