Digital Advertising Veteran Clark Kokich Joins Marchex as Chief Strategy Officer to Help Accelerate Company’s Mobile Advertising Leadership and Customer Development
SEATTLE – Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCHX), a leader in mobile performance advertising, announced that Clark Kokich, advertising technology expert and digital marketing thought leader, has joined the company as its Chief Strategy Officer effective immediately. Kokich brings deep industry leadership and customer relations experience to Marchex and its executive team.
“Clark’s unique skills, insights and experience with transformative markets, combined with his deep understanding of sales, client development and marketing, is precisely what we need as we look to accelerate our opportunity with mobile and call advertising”
Kokich most recently served as Chairman of Razorfish, one of the largest digital marketing agencies in the world, where he also held the roles of CEO and President. During his tenure, Kokich expanded the Seattle-based company’s reach across the globe by using technology to drive advertising performance for some of the world’s largest companies.
He also oversaw strategic direction at Razorfish and entrenched himself with clients, shaping digital innovation from the ground up. Razorfish was the largest operating division within aQuantive, an advertising technology and services giant, and Kokich helped grow the company from pre-IPO status in 1999 to more than $600 million in annualized sales, before it was acquired by Microsoft in 2007. Kokich is the author of “Do or Die: Surviving and Thriving in a World Where the Old Ways of Marketing Aren’t Getting it Done.” He is also a board member of two public companies: Rocket Fuel, a leading programmatic media-buying platform, and Acxiom, an enterprise data and analytics firm.
Kokich’s background in shepherding offline advertisers into the online world in the late ‘90s and through the next decade transformed advertising performance for marketers. Early on, as consumers began migrating to the Internet, advertisers were skeptical of online advertising and unsure of how to leverage it to drive sales. Kokich says he sees the same parallel happening now with the rapid shift from desktop to mobile and that Marchex is uniquely positioned to meet this need.
“What Marchex is doing solves a huge problem for marketers,” Kokich said. “Phone calls will be one of the leading performance drivers in mobile and local marketing. The combination of Marchex’s proprietary Call Analytics technology and its Pay For Call business model creates a gigantic opportunity for us to own this space.”
In his new role, Kokich will be working closely with Marchex executives to help accelerate overall business progress. He will also embed himself with the company’s sales and client-development teams to dig into what he is most passionate about – driving world-class service for customers.
Russell Horowitz, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Marchex, called the appointment of Kokich a “perfect fit” for Marchex.
“Clark’s unique skills, insights and experience with transformative markets, combined with his deep understanding of sales, client development and marketing, is precisely what we need as we look to accelerate our opportunity with mobile and call advertising,” Horowitz said.
“We are first and foremost a customer-focused company. And there is no one better than Clark when it comes to strategically understanding the needs of clients and how to develop those relationships,” said Pete Christothoulou, President of Marchex.
About Marchex
Marchex is a leader in mobile performance advertising. The company delivers customer calls to businesses and analyzes those calls so companies can get the most out of their mobile advertising. Marchex supports its customers through a unique technology platform that has three primary components: (1) Call Analytics, which powers all of our advertising solutions, and allows partners to leverage data and insights that accurately measure the performance of mobile, online and offline call advertising; (2) Digital Call Marketplace, which annually connects millions of consumer calls to our advertisers from a range of mobile and online sources on a Pay For Call basis; and (3) Local Leads, a white-labeled, full-service digital advertising solution for small business resellers that drives quality phone calls and other leads to their small business advertisers. Marchex is based in Seattle. To learn more, please visit www.marchex.com.
