it's official - job change

After another difficult year of work, and of me moaning and groaning just a little bit, it is now official that I am changing jobs. I brought in my resignation letter to Starcom today. It felt really good too. I'm definitely going to miss the friends that I've made, but it was definitely time for me to move on.

My last day at Starcom will be 1/15/10; at which time I will be boarding a plane headed to MT. We're having a late Zenner Family Christmas out at Shaun and Andrea's home - I cannot wait! I'll be out in MT for a week, will come back to Chicago for a week of down time and will start my new job on 2/2/10.

I'm going to the dark side....hahahaha. I'm going to go work for a website...well, actually an ad network. For those of you not familiar with the term "ad network", it's basically a sales firm that represents hundreds/thousands of sites and provides one platform to serve ads across all of those websites. In its basic form ad networks are areas for advertisers to buy audiences online, for example, a client may want to target Adults, Ages 25-54, who are NFL enthusiasts. We would typically use an ad network to help reach that target, along with placements on sites such as NFL.com, ESPN.com, etc. I'm going to a smaller type of ad network - they are what we call a vertical ad network. This means they are known for a specific type of content. The ad network that I'm going to work with is focused on the Outdoor space (i.e. Fishing, Hunting, Boating, Camping, etc).

They have created this new role with me in mind - Director of Research and Marketing. I'm going to rely on my past 10 years (whoa!) of advertising experience to help build up this ad network's presence across ad agencies/clients, provide input on sales presentations, standardize internal processes, etc. I definitely see this role evolving as the company realizes my skill set and once goals are accomplished. I know this role will be challenging, but I also know my time at ad agencies has come to an end, and this seemed like a natural fit into my advertising career.

Whew.

I definitely know how blessed I am to find a new opportunity like this in the economic times we're still experiencing. And I look forward to talking to you, dear readers, in the year ahead and how this was a great decision for my career.

Happy New Year!