I announced last November my move to Clickable, a startup Web service to make online advertising simple and effective. Many have asked me recently: “How’s life going at Clickable?” Entering my third month, life’s been awesome. We’re focused like a laser to redefine the very notion of search advertising with simplicity, powerful recommendations and a beautiful, intuitive experience. There’s a huge amount of investment and brilliant thinking going into product, technology, infrastructure, community, reputation and the founding management team — truly a world-class operation. As my CEO says, we’re moving ahead at Mach 5! Reflecting the vision and innovation, Clickable has been selected by AlwaysOn as the 2008 Newcomer Of The Year, among all of the Top 100 Companies. (Congrats to all my colleauges!)
I’ll say it again: One of the reasons I left a great role at Nielsen Online (formerly known as Nielsen BuzzMetrics) to join Clickable was the cause — it’s massive. The past decade brought some incredible technological innovations, but the paradox is the paralyzing complexity that came with it, stifling the backbone of the online ad industry, particularly small and midsize marketers. But a new wave of innovation has begun, fueled by a thirst to overcome the new enemy: friction and opaqueness wrought by complexity and preservationists. Clickable is representative of a broader seismic shift we’ll witness over the next few years. Consider this: we received thousands of signups for the closed beta with virtually no marketing. Now that’s what you call underlying pain in the marketplace.
Now, back to work. I have a lot of work to do.