October 14, 2008 08:00 AM Eastern Time 

Demand Media Appoints Digital Media Veteran, George Stewart, Executive Vice President, Advertising Sales

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Demand Media™, a leading social media company with one of the largest wholly-owned networks of vertical websites, today announced that it has appointed George Stewart, executive vice president, Advertising Sales. As part of its sustained vision of leading the social media landscape, Demand Media tapped the 19 year industry veteran to oversee advertising sales for all of the company’s business channels. He will report to CEO and co-founder, Richard Rosenblatt.

Stewart’s immediate priority will be to build a world class direct sales team while immediately increasing branded sales revenue through Demand Media’s impressive audience size and extensive set of category-leading media assets, including eHow™, Trails.com, and Cracked® as well as the recently launched LIVESTRONG.COM™

“George is known in the industry for campaigns like Pepsi Smash at Yahoo! where he was really one of the first to take a unique content offering and tailor it for an advertiser,” said Rosenblatt. “With our in-house studio populating our owned and operated media sites, there is a tremendous opportunity to create custom content solutions to support our partners and George knows how to make this happen.”

Stewart’s diverse background includes advertising sales and marketing roles at both large and small businesses. His most recent post was the senior vice president, Advertising Sales at Next New Networks, a producer and syndicator of original internet television networks. In this role, George developed and sold video advertising, brand integration and entire online TV series across numerous social media and video sites, as well the Next New Networks “owned and operated” destinations.

Stewart began his career as a brand manager at GoodMark Foods where he led the explosive growth of the Slim Jim Brand to over $200 million in annual sales. GoodMark was acquired by ConAgra. In 1999, George began his digital media career, at the online music start-up, LAUNCH.com where he was VP of Advertising Sales, working with the founders and executive team to build LAUNCH into a leading music property. LAUNCH was acquired by Yahoo! where as National Director of Sales and Category Development Officer, George led his team in developing and selling various high profile, multi-million dollar campaigns such as Pepsi’s “Smash,”,Nissan’s “Live Sets,” Saturn’s “Who’s Next,” MasterCard’s “Music Unlimited,” and numerous others campaigns for Fortune 500 companies.

George holds a Bachelor of Arts from Colgate University and a Master of Business Administration from Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He resides in Brooklyn with his family.

About Demand Media

Demand Media^TM is a leading social media company that provides an interactive, personalized and vertically-focused media experience for over 73 million unique users. By using its proprietary social media tools and the unique distribution platform of the world's second largest domain registrar, the company connects content creators and audiences to grow its network of vertical media web properties. The privately held company was founded in May 2006 and is based in Santa Monica, CA, with offices in Bellevue, WA, Austin, TX, New York, NY and London, UK. For more information about Demand Media, Inc., please visit: http://www.demandmedia.com.