Longtime Yahoo Exec Joins Quantcast

After nearly a decade, Yahoo’s Todd Teresi is moving on. His new employer, Quantcast, expects the longtime Yahoo exec’s knowledge of both advertising operations and publisher inventory management to inform product development and growth. Of course, Teresi’s relationships with publishers and understanding of their needs are big pluses when it comes to attracting new clients for the audience measurement firm.

“You’re seeing us develop as a company and launch services in a very regimented way so that we address the realities of the marketplace,” said Quantcast CMO Adam Gerber.

The firm hopes as its new chief revenue officer, Teresi will be a bridge to that development. “He understands what publishers are challenged with in terms of the business issues related to inventory management and pricing, and yield optimization and that’s a critical area for us,” Gerber continued.

“The marketplace kind of always pigeonholed us a measurement company,” Gerber said. “We believe that the definition of audience data and how it’s applied has to be completely rethought.”

Teresi most recently served as SVP of Yahoo’s Publisher Network, and worked with the company just over nine years. “I got very familiar with both sides of the operation,” said Teresi, who started in corporate development with the Web giant, and ran its global ad operations team for five years. He then shifted to help develop Yahoo’s growing publisher network, which includes several newspaper site publishers, WebMD, Cnet, and others. According to Teresi, Yahoo has no relationship with Quantcast.

As is the case with many online ad businesses, data is at the heart of what Quantcast does, and that has been a major element of Teresi’s work at Yahoo. In describing Quantcast’s value proposition, he suggested, “Think about them in terms of the asset and the infrastructure that they built…that base level, census level, database level…what can you do with that asset? There’s a variety of different ways Quantcast can take that asset and leverage it.”

Much of Quantcast’s data is gleaned through direct measurement of publisher traffic, or determined through panel-based audience estimates. The company, founded in 2005, provides information on site audience characteristics like audience gender makeup, and which site visitors are “Passers-By” as opposed to “Addicts.”

Quantcast received a second round of funding totaling $20 million in January, and at the time noted plans to bulk up its publisher-aimed offerings and supplement its staff. Earlier this year, the company launched a search tool aimed at media planners that provides lists of Web sites based on defined audience characteristics such as gender, household income, or education level.

Teresi’s new gig will entail both internal product development and working directly with publisher clients. “I’ll be spending a fair amount of time with the teams…talking through the product roadmap,” he said, adding, “another large part of my job is certainly external — getting the various publishers’ feedback on the products.”

As for how the loss of Teresi will affect Yahoo’s own relationships with publishers, that remains to be seen. “We look for talent both internally and externally to step into leadership positions, but we have nothing to announce today,” said Yahoo spokesman Adam Grossberg, noting, “We don’t expect to miss a beat in the execution of our core strategies.”

Working out of its San Francisco headquarters, Teresi will start with Quantcast September 1.