Ophir Tanz works quickly. He started his first company at the age of 15 and sold it by the time he arrived at college. After only four years at Carnegie Mellon, he graduated in 2004 with both bachelor's and master's degrees in Information Systems Management. Within his first three post-graduate years, he clocked time at an internationally known hedge fund, co-founded a boutique wall-covering company, and founded and sold another start-up business.
Now, as founder and CEO of in-image advertising network GumGum, Tanz is keeping his focus on one project. But it doesn't mean he's slowing down. His Santa Monica-based company uses proprietary image recognition technology to place engaging, contextually relevant advertisements over online images. So, for example, an article about the marriage of a celebrity actor might have an advertisement for the star's next movie embedded at the bottom of a wedding photo; click the link, and a trailer for the film opens and begins to play. The ads, Tanz explains, have allowed his company to "[leverage] the last untouched piece of content on the Web-the image."
The concept-in addition to getting more than $11 million in venture funding- has attracted the business of big-name publishing partners like Gannett, Hearst, and Time Warner, whose sites are displaying GumGum ads ranging from Chrysler to VISA. And Web users are responding; Tanz says they've found that in-image ads are clicked on as much as 20 times more than traditional online spots, and GumGum's advertisements are now reaching nearly 140 million users a month.
The success recently landed Tanz on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine.
-Olivia O'Conner (DC'13)
