SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Dec 11, 2014) - Imgur, the fastest-growing image-sharing community on the Internet, today announced that it hired Steve Patrizi as its Vice President of Market Development, responsible for the management and growth of all facets of the ad business including sales, creative services, marketing, ad products, and business development.
"Imgur has become home to one of the most highly engaged communities on the Internet, one that is hugely influential in shaping and driving Internet culture. There's a huge opportunity here for marketers to connect with the people sharing and exploring the web's best visual content," said Patrizi. "We want to help advertisers connect with this group in the right way, so we're going to invest in the people and products to help them be as successful as possible."
Patrizi brings more than 20 years of advertising and digital marketing experience to Imgur, having built the marketing solutions business at LinkedIn and led sales teams at The Wall Street Journal and Microsoft. Most recently he served as Head of Partner Marketing at Pinterest, where he was responsible for building its B2B marketing team, architecting the company's business-focused brand and positioning strategy, and launching the company's native ad products.
"Steve has a huge amount of experience with community driven products that are a part of people's daily lives," said Imgur CEO Alan Schaaf. "I'm incredibly excited to have him on the team, and advertisers will be too."
One of the web's largest and fastest growing destinations
Imgur launched as a simple image-sharing service in 2009, but since launching its community-curated "Gallery" in 2011 it has become one of the most heavily trafficked destinations on the Internet. The company raised $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz -- its first round of funding -- earlier this year to invest in a number of key areas including native advertising, mobile apps, and expanded offerings.
Early success with native advertising tests
Imgur has seen promising results in its experiments with native advertising during the past year. As reported in AdWeek in September, Imgur has shown very strong engagement rates of up to 12% in some of its most recent campaigns. It plans to launch a new suite of offerings leveraging these successes in the first half of 2015.
"We've collaborated with brands in a range of different industries and proven that the model works," said Imgur COO Matt Strader. "Steve will play an indispensable role in building on those successes going forward."
About Imgur
Imgur is best place to explore, share, and discuss the Internet's images.
The site is home to a passionate community of more than 150 million users, and receives more than 60 billion views each month on its content around the web. Millions of images are uploaded each month, where they are voted on, commented on, and distilled by the Imgurian community into a curated, continuously updated stream of the best visual content the web has to offer.
More information and the best images on the Internet can be found at www.imgur.com
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