GoAdv Appoints Giovanni Fantasia as Group COO

DUBLIN, July 5, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- GoAdv (http://www.goadv.com), one of the fastest growing digital media companies in Europe (Source: GP Bullhound Media Momentum 2010), is pleased to announce the appointment of Giovanni Fantasia as Group COO. Bringing to the company over 15 years experience in the internet, technology and management consultancy sectors and a solid background as a strategic, hands-on general manager, Giovanni will be responsible for GoAdv's overall Group operations, including Marketing & Sales, Product, Technology, R&D/Innovation and HR, as well as defining and managing Group strategy.

Based at the company's Rome office, Giovanni joins the Group from his previous position as AutoScout24 Group's Vice President of Sales, headquartered in Munich, (part of the Deutsche Telekom Group) and CEO of AutoScout24 Italy. The AutoScout24 Group is the biggest and best known European internet marketplace for car sales and marketing, strongly integrated into the Automotive Distribution Network value chain.

During his time within the Group, Giovanni's numerous achievements included raising overall Group revenues by 22% and increasing Italy's revenues over 5 times and traffic numbers over 8 times.

Previously Giovanni worked for 5 years at McKinsey & Co as a Management Consultant where his main role involved the full-time responsibility of client projects and relationships at top management and CxO level. He also spent 5 years at Hewlett-Packard as R&D project manager and later Business Development manager. He started his career at IBM Research Center.

Salvatore Esposito, CEO of the GoAdv Group, said, "Giovanni Fantasia is a key hire for GoAdv during a time of tremendous growth and change within the company. We are delighted to welcome him to the team and look forward to putting his considerable experience into practice across the Group properties. His strategic thinking, leadership and international mindset are skills that will greatly enhance our entrepreneurial management team."

Giovanni Fantasia, COO GoAdv Group, comments, "As the market for the production of quality content at scale and on demand increases, GoAdv's position in the sector is becoming increasingly strong. In the last few months GoAdv has secured its position as European leader across its network of over 500 web properties with multilingual content. By making the multilingual quality content production its key unique asset and by applying its core expertise in matching advertisers and web users' needs, GoAdv is clearly at the forefront of this new era in online publishing. It's an incredibly exciting time to be joining the company and I look forward to contributing to the Group's continued growth and success."

About GoAdv

The GoAdv Group is Europe's 4th fastest growing larger digital media company (GP Bullhound Media Momentum 2010) and winner of the 2010 Red Herring Europe 100. Created in 2004 the Group crowdsources, distributes and monetizes over 15,000 items of compelling, multilingual content per month for a wide network of 500+ fully owned and operated websites including Excite Europe, Better Deals, Blogosfere and the Nanopublishing network. The media properties generate over 20 million unique monthly users (Source: Comscore Jan 2010).

GoAdv is a pan-European company and has a staff of over 140 working across offices in Italy, Ireland, and Asia, active in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, US, Australia, Russia and Brazil.

http://www.goadv.com

Contacts GoAdv: Amanda Lorenzani, Head of Communications [e-mail]

GoAdv SA

GoAdv: Amanda Lorenzani, Head of Communications, [e-mail]. [phone]