Chris Pirrone Email & Phone Number

Santa Monica, Ca, Us

Providing strategic advice to media companies on operations, revenue, ad monetization, direct sales, content, and audience growth strategies. Advising and investing in start-ups and venture backed companies.

Los Angeles, California, Us

New York, Ny, Us

Oversaw the P&L, strategy, growth and innovation across The Arena Group's sports vertical including Sports Illustrated, TheSpun, FanNation, Athlon Sports and the SI Media Network. Key Accomplishments: • Improved operations and revenue that led to +$23M YoY EBITDA improvement.• Expanded digital audiences +50% to 60M monthly uniques; ranked 2nd in ComScore sports category.• Compelled innovation and audience growth via transformative hires, expansion of trending news and SEO content strategies, athlete integrations, and new social creator collaborations.• Launched digital strategy for AthlonSports.com from inactive site to 25M monthly uniques and $7M in revenue at 80% margins. Responsibilities:• Managed $200M P&L driving strategy and growth across editorial, product, biz dev/revenue partnerships, direct sales/sponsorships, programmatic and affiliate revenue, syndication, and events.• Oversaw team of 75+ employees, 200+ contractors, and internal matrixed teams. • Innovated content & digital operations, reallocate resources to improve ROI, & invest in growth opportunities. • Created a culture of transformation from legacy print and digital operations to create new audience growth and engagement across digital, social and video channels.• Ideated new sales opportunities that unlock innovative concepts & advertising sponsorship opportunities.

Mclean, Va, Us

Oversaw $100M P&L, operations, content, product, premium sales and indirect monetization for the USA Today Sports Media Group.Key Operating Highlights:• Grew revenue from $6M to $100M+ and EBITDA from -$8M loss to $30M positive EBITDA • Transformed USA Today Sports by incubating 70+ new properties that drove exponential page view and audience growth from 6M to 60M monthly unique users (ranked 4th largest sports property per ComScore).• Innovated new trending news content creation launching sites such as ForTheWin and 70+ team “Wire Sites” focused on vertically entertaining sports content/products for fans that are passionate about a sport, team, or player, growing the team wires to 30M monthly visitors within 3 years. • Led sales team driving $35M in annual direct sales and sponsorships.• Accretive M&A, including Golfweek to expand golf coverage across Gannett local properties, increasing revenue by 300% and transforming margins from -$3M to +$5M Responsibilities:• Lead highly profitable team of 100+ personnel: monetization and yield operations, product and engineering, direct sales, and content creators for 70 owned and 150+ affiliate sports sites. • Managed digital revenue, strategy, audience development, sales, P&L and operations, including personnel responsible for revenue, content, digital strategy, product development, engineering, business development, sales, ecommerce, ad operations, campaign management, analytics.• 4th largest digital sports entity with 60M cross platform unique users generating $100M revenue• Lead premium sales & programmatic ad strategy, including strategic efforts to create new revenue across ecommerce, direct sold multi-year sponsorable assets, native ads, sponsored content, newsletters, and video, social, and audio content. • Revamped sports premium sales strategy to drive alignment with USA Today national sales.

Us

Fifth largest independent digital advertising network focused on helping brand advertisers target their ideal customers across premium web publishers. • Responsible for $40MM P&L (out of $150MM in parent Epic Media Group revenue), team of 50 personnel, 500 premium publishers, 150 monthly branded advertisers, and 3B monthly impressions. • Manage the premium display, mobile and video divisions including responsibility for P&L, strategy and business development, product, agency and advertiser account management, publisher media buying, trafficking, optimization and campaign management, operations, and business intelligence analytics.• In 2011 increased display margins 40% and display revenue 25%.• Instituted more strategic, analytical and data-driven approach to campaign management and media buying that resulted in 200% increase in display network click-through rate and 100% increase in conversion rates YOY.• Led business development efforts with new partners to double the revenue of the mobile business and incubate the video business, including product, tech and marketing. • Increased mobile margins 350% and mobile revenue 250% YOY.• Recruited from General Counsel/CAO position into lead operator role to restructure operations, improve efficiency, and drive increased revenue and margins for established advertising network.• Oversaw migration of display ad platform to enable RTB capabilities, established product requirements, set tech prioritization, and developed external sales and marketing products, decks and pitches.

Us

Private holding company for 3 diverse digital marketing subsidiaries generating over $100MM in revenue.• As CAO and GC, oversaw legal, compliance, privacy, human resources, operations, M&A and business development matters related to the corporate parent and its three business unit subsidiaries generating over $120MM in revenue in the internet marketing and advertising space. • Strategized and led discussions with key partners on business development opportunities, including establishing partnerships to support new mobile and social media initiatives that incubated a $5MM mobile and $20MM social media businesses.• Focused on business development and streamlining operations to best support the needs of the business while managing risk, responsiveness, and growing revenue. • Streamlined the in-house legal/compliance department which reduced department expenses by 300% and lowered outside counsel fee expenditures by over 1000%, while managing risk and improving responsiveness and productivity; restructured HR resulting in annual savings of $500,000.• Implemented advertiser on-boarding procedures, increased collections and reduced bad debt down to below 1% of revenue.• Intimately involved in developing company strategy and Board level presentations/discussions. • 3 main subsidiaries: Traffic Marketplace - top display ad network. Netblue - affiliate and promotional websites. Firstlook - domain and search business.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

One of the world’s largest integrated digital marketing companies; publicly traded $1.5B market cap. • 1 of 2 in-house attorneys supporting $500MM in revenue for publically traded company. • Oversaw broad range of legal and business development issues related to the display, affiliate, comparison shopping, search and promotional advertising channels. • Support geographically diverse U.S. operations and act as the sole legal advisor to European operations located in four countries. • Strategize on partnerships, develop business opportunities and draft unique partner agreements with advertisers and publishers across multiple ValueClick companies, including large partnerships with Fortune 100 companies such as Amazon, Apple and eBay• Evaluate and manage M&A activity to support the company's robust acquisition strategy and assist ValueClick with its European expansion efforts. • Responsible for selection and cost-effective management of outside counsel as well as handling collection and various litigation matters in-house.• Manage the Company's compliance, privacy and regulatory efforts, including Sarbanes-Oxley; design, implement and train international workforce on corporate-wide compliance policies and programs, and various preventive law programs.• Draft minutes of Board and Committee meetings; responsible for preparation of corporate documents and notice of annual meeting of shareholders. • Recruited after serving as outside counsel for Company.

Westlake, Texas, Us

Provided legal, employment and labor relations advice.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Business and employment litigation.

Jd, Law

Ba, Economics

Education record