BIDS.L Regulatory News (BIDS)

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") as applied in the United Kingdom. Upon publication of this Announcement, this information is now considered to be in the public domain.

29 April 2021 

Bidstack Group Plc

("Bidstack" or "the Company")

Katherine Hays, Co-Founder of Massive Inc. joins as Strategic Adviser

Bidstack Group Plc (AIM: BIDS.L), the native in-game advertising platform, is pleased to announce the appointment of Katherine Hays, the Co-Founder and former COO of Massive Inc. ("Massive"), as a Strategic Adviser.

Katherine, with her proven track record in advertising, media, entertainment and gaming, will take a seat on Bidstack's Advisory Board but will also play an active role giving the Company the benefit of her experience and success from the first generation of in-game advertising.

In 2003 Katherine recommended to Massive that it should pivot into in-game advertising and subsequently led the company in building the market for real-time advertising in video games. Massive recognised that young males aged 18 to 34 were becoming increasingly hard to reach through traditional advertising and that video game usage by this market segment had sky-rocketed. Massive built the technology, sales team, back-end operations and ad-serving infrastructure to enable dynamic delivery of advertising into video games for internet enabled PCs and video game consoles providing the first full solution for games publishers and advertisers. Massive was sold to Microsoft in 2006 for US$300 million according to published estimates.

Katherine is an entrepreneur, inventor, global business leader, adviser and board director. She has spent her career at the intersection of media, advertising, and technology, first in equity research at Goldman Sachs before joining Massive.

After the sale of Massive, she served as CEO and Board member of GenArts, an Insight Partners portfolio company, where she grew the company into the leading global provider of special effects software for the professional market, which included customers such as Disney / Pixar, Sony Pictures, NBC Universal and BBC. GenArts was acquired by Boris FX in 2016.

She was most recently Founder and CEO of Vivoom where she developed a vision for helping brands strategically infuse social engagement into their own products and experiences and turn their existing customers into a top performing digital channel for new customer acquisition and existing customer engagement. Clients using Vivoom's software platform included: Capital One, L'Oréal, Costco, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, The Clorox Company and Johnson & Johnson.

Katherine currently serves as adviser and board member to early-stage companies in the sports and media, travel, esports and video gaming industry. She is mentor to hundreds of entrepreneurs and is a regular guest speaker at the Harvard Business School, Columbia University, Princeton University, Stanford's Graduate School of Business and MIT's Sloan School of Management. She is also a member of the Alumni Advisory Board for the Princeton University Entrepreneurship Council.

Katherine Hays said:

"I am delighted to be working together with the Bidstack team. They are passionate and committed to delivering value equitably to gamers, game publishers, developers, and the brands who want to reach this incredible community. I believe Bidstack's leadership is setting high standards that will create tremendous value as the gaming ecosystem continues to expand and mature.

"Digital activities such as social, shopping, live events and search are increasingly taking place inside of games. Gaming has the potential to be consumers' true and enduring "third place" - you have home, work/school, and gaming. I'm thrilled by the opportunity to help Bidstack define how brands can authentically participate in this future while delivering meaningful value to all of the ecosystem's other key stakeholders."

James Draper, CEO of Bidstack said:

"I am very excited that we will have input going forward from Katherine. In Bidstack's journey into in-game advertising I have always been aware that there are a very few people who have been down this path before. As Co-Founder and COO of Massive Inc., Katherine is one of the few.

"After joining Massive Inc. in 2003, she led the company in building a market for real-time dynamic advertising in video games. Massive Inc. was acquired by Microsoft in 2006.

"Since then the video games market has evolved tremendously with developments such as the soaring consumption of gaming content fuelled by smartphone penetration, the rise of cloud gaming, the evolution of the secondary viewing market and the advent of programmatic advertising.

"I am looking forward to working with Katherine enormously and having the business benefit from her active advocacy and input. Her presence and influence in the market bodes well for the future of the second generation of in-game advertising."

-ENDS-

Contacts

Notes to editors

About Bidstack

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 technology is capable of inserting adverts into natural advertising space within video games. Bidstack's customers are games publishers and developers (on the supply side), and advertising agencies, brands and programmatic advertising platforms (on the demand side).

Bidstack contracts exclusive access to the native in-game advertising spaces within video games from their developers or publishers and sells that advertising space either directly to specific brands and their agencies or through programmatic advertising platforms