Wikia Appoints Walker Jacobs Chief Operating Officer
Newly Formed Executive Role to Lead Sales, Marketing, Operations and Advertising Product Development
SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Wikia, the social universe of fandom, today announced that it has appointed Walker Jacobs to its newly formed Chief Operating Officer position. In this role, Jacobs, who will be based in New York, will lead the sales, marketing, operations and advertising product development teams. The announcement was made by Craig Palmer, CEO of Wikia.
Wikia is recognized as the leader in fan-powered content and social communities. Jacobs is charged with accelerating the company's growth by enhancing its advertising product offering, and broadening and deepening its client base. Toward that end, he will oversee the evolution of the Wikia brand and help partners create ways to engage with it and its audience of superfans.
"We are thrilled to welcome Walker to our executive team. He has vast experience in digital media, technology and advertising, and organizing teams for impact," said Mr. Palmer. "Walker is an ideal fit for Wikia as he knows how to combine creativity and seamless execution to deepen and extend how consumers engage with brands."
Jacobs has received multiple awards and honors, including being named a Digital All-Star by Broadcasting & Cable; Executive of the Year by The Digital Leadership Academy; and being named to the MediaWeek 50 and AdWeek's '20 to Watch' lists.
Commenting on his new role, Jacobs said: "The impressive team at Wikia has somewhat quietly developed an incredible company whose primary asset, Wikia.com, would be the envy of any media company. Through its deep, insightful content and remarkable user loyalty, Wikia has built one of the media world's largest and most global audiences, and the engagement levels and total audience number continue to grow. Wikia's biggest differentiator is its content – and that content originates from the hundreds of thousands of wildly passionate fans that lead the conversations on Wikia. The challenge – and exciting opportunity – we face is to continue developing the Wikia brand, and unlocking new ways to showcase the power of Wikia's unrivalled fan communities. I look forward to working with the Wikia team and making this happen."
Jacobs has nearly 20 years of experience in sales, marketing and product innovation. Most recently, Jacobs was President and Chief Revenue Officer of Clear Channel Outdoor, where he was responsible for leading go-to-market strategies for the company's out-of-home assets in the U.S. and Canada. Prior to Clear Channel, Jacobs was Executive Vice President at Turner Broadcasting System, the cable television division of Time Warner, where he led Turner Digital. There he was responsible for leading sales and marketing across Turner's portfolio of digital properties including CNN.com, Bleacher Report, NBA Digital, NCAA.com (and March Madness Live), NASCAR.com, PGATour.com, PGA.com, SI.com, Adult Swim, Funny or Die, CartoonNetwork.com, TBS, TNT, and many others. While at Turner, Jacobs built and led one of the media industry's largest digital ad sales and marketing organizations.
The addition of Jacobs comes at a time of significant growth for Wikia. Within three years, its online community has grown from 50 million unique monthly visitors to 140 million, per Quantcast.
About Wikia:
Wikia, the social universe for fans, by fans, is the home for social fandom and the ultimate source for powerful and relevant pop culture, entertainment and gaming expertise. It is the definitive place for people to contribute to the assembly of original bodies of multi-media content around subjects they know and love. Using Wikia, anyone can form new communities around any subject or participate in over 350,000 existing communities by reading or contributing new content. With over 34 million pages of rich content, Wikia's communities are the most authoritative information about any topic on the Internet. Wikia's video game vertical (games.wikia.com) is a leading video-game focused information hub on the Web. Wikia's recently expanded entertainment verticals (movies.wikia.com, tv.wikia.com, books.wikia.com and music.wikia.com) collectively represent the fastest growing U.S. entertainment destination around the world. Lifestyle.wikia.com boasts over 75,000 communities chronicling fashion, food and technology.
Launched in 2006 by founder Jimmy Wales, Wikia attracts more than 140 million global unique visitors per month and is ranked a Quantcast Top 20 and comScore Top 80 Internet site, as well as a Nielsen Top 10 social network. www.wikia.com or @wikia
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