SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GumGum, the leading computer vision platform for marketers, today announced that Sirous Wadia has joined the company as Vice President of Social Strategy. With more than ten years of experience in the software industry, Wadia brings a deep passion for scaling high-growth software companies. Wadia’s hire enhances GumGum’s ability to meet the rapidly growing demand for image recognition capabilities, especially in how they contribute to the comprehensive understanding of user-generated content. To that end, Wadia will primarily focus on GumGum Social, the company’s visual listening platform that uses image recognition to detect people, objects, logos and more within user-generated content. GumGum Social enables brands to identify and activate online pictures relevant to them, as well as engage their top influencers on social media.
“Our intention at GumGum is to apply our core image recognition capabilities to new and exciting use cases as we continue to grow; advertising is just one realm where the ability to understand the content of images at scale offers the opportunity for outsized value creation. Socially-shared images are another key area that, with the right understanding, can actually help inform decisions and bring brands closer to their individual customers,” said Ophir Tanz, Chief Executive Officer, GumGum. “In Sirous we found an experienced executive with a similar passion for bringing industry-leading innovation to market.”
Over his career, Wadia has served as the Senior Manager of Strategic Sales Programs at VMware, an early virtualization pioneer, where he was responsible for creating the global sales methodology and ensuring its consistent application. Joining when the company was just a few hundred employees, Wadia contributed to the business’s overall growth; when he left it had just under eight thousand employees. With the drive to play an even larger role in another high-growth company, he joined Marin Software, an early entrant in paid search management, as the Vice President of Accounts, where he built and led the customer success organization.
“Joining GumGum was one of the easiest decisions I’ve had the fortune to make as an executive,” said Wadia. “The combination of a driven and intelligent team, market-creating technology, and great success to date, was all I needed to see in order to know that I wanted to be a part of this company. GumGum is at the tip of the arrow of image recognition; applying that technology to the social sphere through visual listening is an exciting opportunity and challenge and I’m thrilled they’ve entrusted me with driving growth and adoption for GumGum Social.
ABOUT GUMGUM
GumGum is a leading computer vision company
with a mission to unlock the value of every online image for marketers.
Its patented image-recognition technology delivers highly visible
advertising campaigns to more than 400 million users as they view
pictures and content across more than 2,000 premium publishers.
Founded in 2007, GumGum invented the in-image advertising category and is used by the majority of Fortune 100 companies. GumGum ads consistently achieve an 81% viewability rate and deliver 10 times better engagement than traditional display options, while still prioritizing high-quality inventory, brand safety, and user experience. The company also offers GumGum Social, a real-time visual listening platform that helps brands identify and activate online pictures relevant to them, as well as engage their top influencers on social media.
