Bidstack Group PLC Advisory Board Appointment (1881W)

TIDMBIDS

RNS Number : 1881W

Bidstack Group PLC

15 April 2019

Certain information contained within this Announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014 ("MAR"). Upon publication of this Announcement, this information is now considered to be in the public domain.

15 April 2019

Bidstack Group PLC ("Bidstack or "the Company")

Appointment of Will Kassoy to Advisory Board

Over 23 years of success with Disney, Activision Blizzard and AdColony

Bidstack Group plc (AIM: BIDS.L), the native in-game advertising group, is pleased to announce the appointment of Will Kassoy to its newly formed Advisory Board, following the recent appointments of Pete Beeney (Spotify) and Joel Livesey (The Trade Desk).

Will has extensive knowledge of both sides of Bidstack's business model, having launched and grown some of Activision Blizzard's best known computer games into billion dollar franchises, before leading AdColony, a pre-revenue game-focused adtech company, to a US$350 million exit.

Will was CEO of AdColony, a video advertising platform reaching over one billion consumers globally. He led AdColony from pre-revenue through to its 2014 US$350 million sale to then Norwegian, and now NASDAQ, listed Opera Limited in just three and a half years. AdColony was recognised on Inc 500's list of Fastest Growing Private Companies in America in two consecutive years (2013 and 2014). Following the sale of AdColony, Will was promoted to CEO of Opera's Mobile Advertising Division (a group that included nine other acquisitions), and led a global organisation with over 700 employees in more than 20 offices worldwide.

Prior to AdColony, Will enjoyed 13 years with Activision Blizzard in Global Brand Management, as Senior Vice President. In his time there he worked on many games including building and growing three separate billion dollar video game franchises - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Guitar Hero and Call of Duty. Earlier in his career, he spent five years at The Walt Disney Company where he contributed to the early foundation of Disney Interactive and helped launch some of its successful games including Aladdin, Lion King and Toy Story.

Will is currently President of Los Angeles-based Omaze, a growth stage, for profit platform, that offers once-in-a-lifetime experiences to raise funds and awareness for critical causes.

James Draper, CEO of Bidstack, commented, "We have been keen for Will to join us for quite some time.

"He's the only person we've come across who has C suite experience in both a AAA game publisher and in the adtech space. His experience of leading a company from startup to exit, and his public company experience following the integration of AdColony into Opera, also perfectly fits our journey.

"Adcolony created in-app reward video, a completely new market which has exploded and defined the way casual games can promote their offering.

"At Activision Blizzard Will led the pitch to Tony Hawk, which created one of the most recognised video game sporting franchises ever created. He then grew Guitar Hero into a global phenomenon. In addition, under Will's guidance, Call of Duty was grown into one of the world's most revered video games.

"He's a great guy and superb mentor for us all.

"Following the recent appointments of Mike Hayes to our Board and Pete Beeney and Joel Livesey to our Advisory Board, we are continuing to build a pool of available talent with unrivalled experience and relationships in both the video game and adtech communities."

ENDS

Contacts

Bidstack Group PLC

James Draper, CEO [phone]

SPARK Advisory Partners Limited (Nomad)

Mark Brady/Neil Baldwin/James Keeshan [phone]

Peterhouse Capital Limited (Broker)

   Eran Zucker/Lucy Williams/Duncan Vasey                                         [phone] 

Alma PR

Josh Royston/Sam Modlin [phone]

Notes to editors

Bidstack is an advertising technology company which provides dynamic, targeted and automated native in-game advertising for the global video games industry across multiple platforms. Its proprietary API technology is capable of inserting adverts into natural advertising space within video games across multiple video games platforms (mobile, PC and console).

Bidstack's customers are games publishers and developers and advertising agencies, brands and programmatic advertising platforms. Bidstack contracts exclusive access to the native in-game advertising space within video games from their developers or publishers and sells that advertising space either direct to specific brands and their agencies or through programmatic advertising platforms.

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END

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April 15, 2019 04:20 ET (08:20 GMT)