Mobile search firm opens NY office

By Giselle Abramovich

January 31, 2008

JumpTap recently hired two new executives

What’s JumpTap got brewing for 2008?

The mobile search and advertising service provider recently hired two new executives and announced it will be opening an office in New York in March.

“I joined about three weeks ago and I’m incredibly excited to be at JumpTap,” said Paran Johar, the new chief marketing officer at Cambridge, MA-based JumpTap. “My first priority now is to develop a marketing plan for 2008.”

JumpTap also hired Internet advertising veteran Evan Krauss as global senior vice president of advertising sales and business development.

Mr. Krauss’s hire signals a sharp increase in market demand for mobile advertising, per Mr. Johar.

“Advertisers are recognizing the many benefits of mobile, including the extensive reach and impact mobile ads can have,” Mr. Krauss said. “Consequently, we are seeing an ever-increasing number of major brands and agencies incorporating mobile into their digital marketing mix.”

 Mr. Krauss has worked for brands like Yahoo, AOL, Excite, LookSmart and Agency.com. He was most recently president and CEO of Cuts Inc., an online video editing service.

Mr. Krauss will be based in JumpTap’s New York office.

“We are fundamentally a business-to-business company so we are not going to be doing Super Bowl ads,” Mr. Johar said. “We are looking for new ways to communicate with our target audience.

“Evan and I joining is the critical component between building a bridge between mobile, Internet and traditional advertising,” he said. "We are trying to meet the demands of East coast advertisers and agencies.”

Mr. Johar said that some very large advertisers have allocated eight-digit amounts to their mobile advertizing budgets for 2008.

“For mobile, 2007 was the year of testing,” Mr. Johar said. “Now that all of that is out of the way, 2008 is the year of mobile because the handset is a personal device that lets users engage with a brand.”