CRAIG BERLINGO
SUMMARY
Monetization and Social Media industry veteran with 14 years of experience scaling products and organizations. Creative leader with a history of execution, building cutting edge solutions, and specializing in Ad Platforms, Ecommerce, User Generated Content, and Social Games.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
INDEPENDENT CONSULTANT
Senior Leadership roles in Online Advertising, Ecommerce, and Social Media Monetization
SAY MEDIA (formerly VideoEgg + Six Apart)
• Lead cross-functional group using analytics and interviews to gather, document, and roll out best practices to maximize metrics such as engagement, time spent, clicks, and video completes across communities;
• Scaled creative and marketing teams to maximize brand advertiser’s KPIs across blogs and communites;
• Created feature briefs for major functionality, including embedded video, for diverse stakeholders.
WIKIA
• Revenue generating product leadership for a top social media website focused on building organic communities around content curation and aggregation;
• Strategic and functional responsibility for monetization through: brands sales and partnerships, self-services advertising platform, unique display products, and premium subscriptions;
• Created client-facing analytics insight tool based on unique internal metrics to increase size of ad buys.
GOOGLE / DOUBLECLICK
• Coordinated international team to migrate all advertising data for AOL onto DART for Publishers. Created project timelines, engineering specs, and contingency plan for massive rapid migration.
• Gathered information from a cross-functional team and created extensive process documentation for eBay’s advertising solution, ensuring client satisfaction with a unique implementation.
ACCOONA
• Aggressively drove Ecommerce division, generating $150 million in annual revenue for six consumer electronics properties and a comparison shopping engine;
• Overhauled all properties and boosted natural traffic through SEO resulting in more highly qualified visitors and increasing conversion rates;
• Streamlined external SEM strategy across properties, significantly increasing ROI.
THEOREM INC
• Pre-sales and post-sales support for a SaaS data management solution that synchs online advertising platform data into one analytics platform;
• Created implementation process and documentation, while leading the implementation of beta clients.
GANNETT CO, INC
• Migrated all advertising for broadcast and newspaper online properties from individual instances of 24/7 Real Media’s OAS to a networked AOL’s ADTECH ad platform, including automatic retagging, trafficking, and verification;
• Establish ad operations team by hiring staff, setting up IO fulfillment process, and defining success metrics.
ROCKYOU!
Senior Director of Product Development
Strategy
• Monetized social media for owned and operated apps and games as well as a large network of publishers, while balancing the demands of a healthy, high margin ad network.
• Push the boundaries of online advertising with in-game ad units incentivized with virtual currency and gifts
• Thought leader in brand and performance based advertising on Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Hi5, Bebo, etc.
• Provide advertisers deep demographic and social graph data through third-party integrations, an ability to acquire users based on lifetime value, and unique conversions such as Twitter followers and Facebook fans
Leadership
• Manage the product development teams for the world’s largest social media ad network, including product managers, platform engineers, UI developers, analytics, business intelligence, architecture, and QA
• Implement product development process and methodology, standard documentation, support structure and escalation path for internationally distributed teams
• Execute on business requirements from sales, marketing, engineering, ad ops, and other stakeholders
• Lead cross functional strategic efforts including outbound user acquisition and marketing analytics, ERP, and critical projects for Facebook.
Product development
• Built a robust advertising platform running exclusively on social media with performance optimization, delivery priority, full targeting options, robust reporting, self-service, and campaign management
• Scaled product to support 20 billion impressions a month, hundreds of advertisers, thousands of publishers, and tight integration with remnant ad networks and other third parties.
• Created both IAB standard and unique ad units leveraging video, flash, and expandables.
• Excelled in the unique environment of ad delivery on social media platforms and within apps and games
CENDANT / TRIP NETWORK
Business Manager / Product Manager
• Champion and driver of product development, design, and workflow for the 4th largest travel website.
• Responsible for several high margin products representing over $30 million in annual revenue.
• Increased the Car Business Vertical’s revenue by 75%, average cost of rental by 30%, and share of overall reservations by 50%, including through up-sells, cross-sells, and streamlined conversion funnels.
• Improved the enterprise value of Cendant Travel Distributions Services by coordinating with in-house properties, travel agents, and other customer-facing groups on product functionality
DMIND
Global Product Manager
• Brought a 3-tiered Java / XML solution to the enterprise management and web hosting markets
• Initiated and coordinated all aspects of development, support, and service of middleware solution
• Structured, managed, and led teams responsible for Java development, QA, Documentation, and Training
• Managed relationship with international partners, third parties, and strategic clients
DOUBLECLICK, INC.
Senior Strategic Engineer, TechSolutions for eMail
• Developed long-term strategies and functionality specifications for a new email advertising solution
• Established relationships with multiple business units to ensure product excellence and success
• Defined roles and responsibilities across the TechSolutions for eMail business unit
• Prioritized product enhancement requirements and timelines for delivery for highly scalable products
• Created and conducted Beta test plan, defined milestones, and exit criteria for product launch
• Designed API workflow to be compatible with clients’ email strategy
• Monitored competitive performance and incorporated feedback into each product
• Recruited, trained, and supervised team of Consultants and Sales Engineers
• Built ad hoc supplementary online tools for clients and consultants
Senior Sales / Consulting Engineer, TechSolutions for Publishers
• Provided business and technical analysis to top web sites on their current and future business models, working with clients’ technical, sales, and marketing teams
• Presented software as a service (SaaS) model and conducted pre-sales demonstration
• Consulted on advertising strategy and implemented DART for 60 clients, including: Viacom, iVillage, Businessweek, HotJobs, and American Express Travel
IBM
Consultant / IT Specialist, Global Services
• Client-facing consultant and developer creating an object oriented front end extending over middleware for a call center environment.
• Architected and implemented Java servlets using Enterprise Java Beans connecting network computers to legacy systems
EDUCATION
Boston College 5/97
Bachelor of Arts, Computer Science and Bachelor of Arts, Psychology; Concentration, Philosophy
IBM Global Services Institute 9/97
Consultants training, Customer Relationship Management training, Advanced Java Programming, AIX administration, DB2 and CICS introduction