Vibrant Media appoints new programmatic lead

Native advertising platform Vibrant Media has appointed Andy Smith as head of programmatic UK.

With previous roles including senior positions at DMG World Media, Centaur, Trader Media Group and Chango, Smith will help launch Vibrant’s original In-Text format – green double-underlined hyperlinked words within editorial – as a programmatic format.

The company currently has over 6,600 publishers on its trading platform, which allows native ad campaigns to be deployed at scale across smartphone, tablet and desktop devices.

“The drive for simplicity and cost-effectiveness is why Vibrant is succeeding at delivering native ad campaigns programmatically,” said Smith.

“The formats are incredibly viewable and engaging and do not require the constant customisation and offline negotiation associated with most other native ad campaigns. Combining the contextual targeting of native with the audience targeting of programmatic means that campaigns can achieve an extremely high level of relevance to audiences.

“Vibrant’s sizable network also means advertisers can achieve massive scale programmatically, which the vast majority of native ad campaigns lack.”

Craig Gooding, founder and executive chairman of Vibrant Media, added: “Andy’s experience in delivering sales plans for programmatic channels, setting pricing strategies and supporting go to market plans means he will be integral to transitioning more of Vibrant’s clients, publisher partners and formats to programmatic trading.”