Mr Interactive Advertising, Paran Johar, joins JumpTap

With Nielsen recently revealing that 46 million mobile users used mobile search functions in Q3 2007, the marketplace for mobile search and advertising is hotting up. Right there in the middle of it is JumpTap.

Business is good at JumpTap — so much so, they’re busy extending their team — and they’ve just hired an interactive advertising guru in the form of Paran Johar. Apart from speaking the language of the ad agency big wigs on Madison Avenue, Paran will be working to reinforce JumpTap’s relationship with advertising and marketing communities and to help brands and advertisers effectively employ JumpTap’s highly-targeted mobile search and advertising solutions.

Over to CEO Dan Olschwang:

‘Paran provides a unique perspective, having integrated offline, online and mobile marketing strategies for large brands,” said Dan Olschwang, president and CEO of JumpTap. ‘His leadership and strategic insight will help JumpTap continue its global growth, product innovation and ability to offer a full suite of mobile search and advertising solutions that truly reflect the needs of advertising agencies and the clients they represent. Paran’s addition to the team fuels our prediction that 2008 is the year of mobile advertising.”

And Johar’s background?

Johar comes to JumpTap from MRM Worldwide, McCann’s digital division, where he was executive vice president of digital marketing for North America and managing director of the Los Angeles office.

So Johar knows a thing or two about interactive marketing. Before MRM, he was the top chap at the LA office of Tribal DDB, quickly growing their revenues to $80m+. Paran’s been working with the likes of GM, Microsoft, Wells Fargo (you can’t go a mile in San Francisco without coming across a Wells Fargo), Paramount, E! Online and Applebees (British: think TGI Fridays-ish).

How does Paran react to his new role?

‘JumpTap is in an enviable position because it allows advertisers to reach a personal medium that is in everyone’s hands and which has yet to be fully leveraged,” said Johar. ‘With over 2.7 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, mobile search and advertising has enormous growth potential. Capitalising on JumpTap’s market leading search and advertising technology to deliver behaviorally targeted ads, one of my jobs is to place a quantifiable value on the incredible synergy between medium and message that only JumpTap can deliver to agencies and their clients.”

Exciting. Very exciting. We need more of this in the mobile industry. We need more interactive advertising geniuses to feel the force and work their magic with their heavily mainstream-focused contacts.

If you’re popping by New York any time soon, it might be worth connecting with Paran as he’s heading up the JumpTap NYC office. I’m going to try and catch him for an interview shortly.