There was a time when a group of high school friends with nothing better to do would get a band together. Now they form startups.
In the late nineties, Birmingham, Alabama high school students Hagan Major, Joseph Hirsch, and Jared Christopherson built an online ad network that later became ClickHype. They took business meetings in the school library and had their parents drive them to meet clients. Within a few years the network was serving over 50 million ad impressions per day.
Ten years later the ClickHype crew reunited in New York and decided to get the old band back together. With a few other grizzled industry vets, they formed YellowHammer Media Group - a full-service interactive agency that uses technology, data, and creative to radically improve the display advertising industry.
"We're able to offer incredible, hyper-local ad targeting," Christopherson, YellowHammer's CIO and partner, told us. "For example a picture of sushi in an ad in Seattle will do better than in Texas. And we can do that down to the neighborhood level. Different colors, different style buttons - depending on where that person lives, they can have a huge impact on the conversion rate."
YellowHammer's clients include One Kings Lane and the Obama campaign. The team numbers 24 and they're hiring - check out the openings here.
Now go forth (and rock out).
Sign up for Wakefield here