New York, NY, January 17, 2012 – BlackArrow, a worldwide provider of advanced advertising solutions for New TV platforms, today announced a trio of strategic hires that bolsters the company’s multiplatform advertising marketplace expertise and builds upon its accomplished management team. The new executives bring proven success in on-demand and linear television; social and broadband video; and the advertising and media marketplaces to broaden BlackArrow’s expertise in providing advertising technology and services to monetize TV content across multiple platforms.

The new appointments include:

• Dr. Joseph Matarese, CTO – a highly regarded, senior cable television and telecommunications technology executive, renowned for thought-leadership and innovation in the development of on-demand advertising and content systems;

• Tricia Iboshi, senior vice president, client services and operations – a proven veteran of the IP video and social video markets with KitDigital and thePlatform; and

• Dean McCormick, vice president, advertising solutions – a media executive with extensive experience in ad sales, strategy and business development

“The ability to successfully monetize television content is the lever that will ultimately drive the market success of multiplatform viewing,” said Dean Denhart, CEO of BlackArrow. “Joe, Tricia and Dean collectively have the advanced advertising expertise and the diversity of platform experience required to drive viewer engagement and new revenue across multiple devices for service providers, programmers and advertisers.”

Dr. Joseph Matarese was most recently vice president and general manager of the On Demand Business Unit for ARRIS Group, where he was a key figure in the product development of on-demand advertising and switched IP-based video systems deployed worldwide. Holder of a Ph.D. in Geophysics from MIT, Matarese began his cable career in 1995 with nCUBE, where he rose from field service engineer to CTO. Following the acquisition of nCUBE by C-COR, he served as senior vice president of global advanced technology with C-COR. He joined ARRIS upon the acquisition of C-COR in 2007. Matarese is a published scientific author, and an active member of cable community organizations such the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM).

Tricia Iboshi has more than 16 years’ experience in the digital media arena, delivering broadband video and content syndication solutions to media companies and content aggregators. Most recently senior vice president, sales, at KIT digital, Iboshi also held senior-management positions as the executive vice president of sales with KickApps, and vice president of sales with thePlatform. Earlier in her career, Iboshi had been co-founder and vice president of business development of RocketVox, which was acquired by thePlatform in 2001. Her expertise across business development, product sales, account development and sales engineering will be critical to the continued success of BlackArrow’s client deployments.

Dean McCormick is an advertising and media industry veteran who brings a decade-and-a-half of experience in ad sales, media strategy and business development to BlackArrow, where he will drive advertising market development and content-monetization solutions for New TV. Prior to joining BlackArrow, Dean McCormick had been co-founder of Mix Media, an advertising sales and marketing services company representing advanced TV networks and digital entertainment properties. As executive vice president, interactive strategy and business development at Havoc Television, his responsibilities encompassed ad sales, audience research and interactive programming development. McCormick also served as production manager for New York Times Television, and began his career with Bill Moyers in the public television sector.

About BlackArrow, Inc.
BlackArrow is a leading worldwide provider of advanced advertising technology for New TV platforms. The company’s multiplatform advertising system is designed specifically for video content distributed over any on-demand platform, enabling networks and content distributors to maximize advertising revenues. BlackArrow is privately held, and backed by Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), Comcast Interactive Capital, Intel Capital (NASDAQ: INTC), Mayfield Fund, Motorola Ventures (NYSE: MOT), NDS Group, LTD., Polaris Venture Partners and Time Warner Cable. The company has offices in New York City and San Jose, Calif. http://www.blackarrow.tv

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BlackArrow, and the BlackArrow logo are trademarks of BlackArrow, Inc. All rights reserved.

We are looking for an outstanding Linux Systems Engineer who will maintain and tune application systems in a 24×7 production, QA, and development environment. You will be responsible for recommending, installing, configuring, and maintaining our primarily Linux servers (including applications such as JBoss, Tomcat, and Apache) as well as some Windows servers.  If you are a self-starter, with enthusiasm about joining an up-and-coming young company, we would love to hear from you!

Responsibilities:

• Provide day-to-day management of multiple environments such as: production, staging, and development.
• Provide 24x7x365 support for production infrastructures and perform troubleshooting to resolve problems.
• Designate metrics and approaches for monitoring performance, availability, and resource usage of our on-demand applications.
• Set up, tune, deploy and manage the environments and servers for development, staging, sales, and training (Apache, JBoss, Linux, Tomcat, MySQL, Web services), including but not limited to NFS, NAS, SAN, and DAS.
• Work closely with our managed infrastructure and services provider to troubleshoot systems and environment issues to ensure systems availability, performance, and other service level agreements are met.
• Work closely with other departments to resolve systems, application and customer issues.
• Test and deploy new application releases and patches.
• Perform capacity planning.
• Install, configure and maintain Linux, Windows Servers, Active Directory, LDAP, and VMware servers.
• Develop plans, schedules and requirements for installation and maintenance of new and revised software.
• Document and update procedures and processes as necessary.
• Be flexible to perform additional duties as required.
  

Qualifications and Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences or equivalent experience.
• Minimum of 7 years of experience with Linux, VMware, Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, and MySQL
• Experience supporting a 24×7 customer-visible production environment.
• Advanced Linux command-line and scripting proficiency.
• Proficiency with system resource management (optimizing memory, storage, I/O on shared virtual machines, etc).
• Experience with Apache, Tomcat, and JBoss (including compiling and installing, configuring, and troubleshooting using a variety of server modules).
• Experience with VMware (or other virtualization technologies).
• Experience working with High Availability systems as well as with SAN and NAS.
• Java experience and JVM tuning (no programming skills required, but you should know how it works, how to spot and debug it, and how to work with code developers – You will be the gate, so that NO developers have access to production.
• Experience with various shell scripts (bash/ksh/csh/bourne).
• Experience with capacity planning.
• Proficiency using RPM to package software.
• Experience with popular open source computer system and network monitoring application software tools such as Nagios, Cacti, MRTG, etc.
• Experience with load balancers, network routing protocols, and firewalls.
• Experience with installing, configuring, and troubleshooting both Linux and MS Windows Active Directory.
• Knowledge of software development, QA, and release processes.
• Knowledge of security fundamentals and best practices, and understanding of their impact on system and network reliability.
• Working knowledge of Windows Server 2008.
• Experience prioritizing daily tasks and longer-term projects, while defining process improvements.
• Excellent communication and customer service skills (both written and oral, for both technical and non-technical people).
• Exceptional trouble shooting and problem-solving skills with an obsessive attention to detail.
• Superb self-management skills.
• Great attitude, motivated to learn.

Preferred Experience:

• MySQL administrative experience.
• Amazon EC2 and S3 experience

BlackArrow offers a fast, fun, creative and diverse work environment. We provide a highly competitive compensation plan and benefits package consisting of medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and 401(k). To apply, please submit your cover letter and resume to employment@blackarrow.tv

BlackArrow is an equal opportunity employer. Principals only, please.

BlackArrow is looking for a dynamic, highly motivated Senior Interaction Designer to own the interactive experience users have when engaging with BlackArrow’s advanced advertising solution for new TV platforms.

This individual will be a senior member of the user experience team and will have ownership over critical areas of the product including the overall interactive and functional design of the product. The senior interaction designer will be heavily involved during the planning and research phase, and will work directly with the product team to help define the entire user experience for every project.

We’re looking for someone who can not only knock out wireframes, but also has a solid understanding of user-centered design processes and interaction design principles.

Responsibilities:

• Translating business requirements into intuitive and meaningful interactive experiences
• Easing the usability and discoverability of our software and optimizing the conversion process from new to experienced user
• Develop and document detailed user experience specifications including: wireframes, use cases, content inventories, site maps and other strategy documents
• Collaboratively develop prototypes for demonstration of concepts and interactions
• Creating the information architecture and interaction design for our application(s)

Qualifications:

• Ability to translate requirements documents into design decisions
• Being able to work with cross-functional teams to develop ideas, and execute against them
• Excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills
• Ability to translate user research and analytics data into design decisions
• An obsessive attention to detail that borders on being a perfectionist when it comes to UI/UX work
• Excellent understanding of Web UI technologies

Required:

• 5+ years experience as an usability engineer, product designer, interaction designer, or experience designer, preferably with strong experience working on software as a service (SaaS) products
• Degree in a related field, such as Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Graphical Design, Technical Communications, Industrial Design. But if you studied chemistry and are now a rock star interaction designer, that is good too.
• Advanced proficiency in a variety of software including and PowerPoint/Keynote, Adobe Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator and the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite, Visio, and the MS Office Suite
• Some travel may be required

BlackArrow offers a fast, fun, creative and diverse work environment. We provide a highly competitive compensation plan and benefits package consisting of medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and 401(k). To apply, please submit your cover letter and resume to employment@blackarrow.tv

BlackArrow is an equal opportunity employer. Principals only, please.

New York, NY, January 6, 2012 –BlackArrow, a leading worldwide provider of advanced advertising solutions for New TV platforms, today announced that Kelly Ryan, vice president, content business development, has been recognized for her leadership in the multichannel video industry.

Ryan, a leading figure in driving the adoption of new technologies for cable telecommunications providers, has been named one of 12 “Women to Watch” for 2012 by Multichannel News – a leading trade publication. The “Women to Watch” and Multichannel News’ 2012 class of “Wonder Women” will be recognized at a luncheon on March 13 at the New York Hilton.

The award is the second recognition of Ryan’s work in recent months.  Previously, she was honored as one of 50 technology executives named as “Top Women in Cable Tech” by CableFax: The Magazine.

“Kelly Ryan’s programmer relationships and her practical application of new technologies have been invaluable to BlackArrow,” said Nick Troiano, president of BlackArrow. “Her ability to work closely with the cable community has accelerated content provider adoption of the BlackArrow Advanced Advertising System, as well as programmer participation in our Advanced Advertising Media Project (AAMP) research initiative.”

With deep ties to cable industry innovation, Ryan has helped to drive the growth of digital networks, DVRs, new media and other advances during a 15-year career with Time Warner, Viacom and News Corp.’s Fox Entertainment Group. With BlackArrow, she has led programmer participation in VOD market trials and deployments, and has been a key catalyst for programmer support of AAMP – ,a research-based initiative founded by the 4A’s, BlackArrow and other media and advertising market leaders to measure the impact of advertising within free video-on-demand (VOD) content.

The complete list of “Wonder Women” and “Women to Watch” honorees is available at http://www.multichannel.com/info/2013-Wonder_Women_Luncheon.php

About BlackArrow, Inc.
BlackArrow is a leading worldwide provider of advanced advertising technology for New TV platforms. The company’s multiplatform advertising system is designed specifically for video content distributed over any on-demand platform, enabling networks and content distributors to maximize advertising revenues. BlackArrow is privately held, and backed by Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), Comcast Interactive Capital, Intel Capital (NASDAQ: INTC), Mayfield Fund, Motorola Ventures (NYSE: MOT), NDS Group, LTD., Polaris Venture Partners and Time Warner Cable. The company has offices in New York City and San Jose, Calif. http://www.blackarrow.tv

BlackArrow and the BlackArrow logo are trademarks of BlackArrow, Inc.

The landmark study, which examined the viewing behavior of more than 1,000 consumers, revealed that advertising within a VOD environment has a positive impact on the level of engagement of consumers — enabling agencies, cable operators and networks to leverage full, linear TV ad loads, while allowing advertisers to utilize longer-form approaches that can serve as avenues for enhanced creativity.

Conducted at unprecedented scale with television programming from 11 AAMP member broadcast and cable networks and branded messaging from 10 national advertisers across six categories, the AAMP study revealed four basic themes:

• Advertisements within a VOD context statistically have the same impact, no matter what the size of the ad load;
• Because consumers view VOD as television, they accept advertising on VOD as a logical part of the on-demand experience;
• On-demand television has a positive effect on consumers’ sense of control over content and advertising; and
• VOD provides opportunities for increased ad durations that can foster greater storytelling and information sharing by advertisers

“When it comes to advertising, the ‘TV Environment‘ absolutely matters,” said Bill Koenigsberg, president, CEO and founder of Horizon Media. “If there is one finding from this study that is particularly relevant to the media industry, it’s this: consumers will watch, recall and respond even to heavy loads of ads within VOD programming.”

“The AAMP findings mirror our own customers’ favorable response to increased choice and control with their entertainment viewing,” said Marcien Jenckes, senior vice president and general manager, video services for Comcast. “Our ultimate goal is to provide our customers with the best programming content available, while providing opportunities for sponsors and advertisers to benefit from the On Demand platform.”

Conducted by Ipsos OTX, Phase II of the AAMP study tested three different VOD ad loads within 19 primetime TV shows or segments of 30 minutes each. The test formats included: a “Light” load with three minutes of inventory; a “Moderate” load of five and one-half minutes of advertising; and a “Heavy” load which contained eight minutes of advertising. In addition, the study tested a second version of the “Light” load that included a 90-second ad unit. All groups were benchmarked against the standard eight-minute linear ad load.

Participants watched comedy, drama and reality programming that contained ads from various categories such automotive, consumer products, financial services, pharmaceutical, retail and technology. The tests were conducted in custom-built media labs in New York and Los Angeles, and utilized a sophisticated set-top box VOD interface that was custom-built by NDS, a leading global provider of digital TV technology and advanced advertising solutions for the pay TV industry. Consumers used a specially created mobile handset app to record their experiences while viewing; in addition, in-depth follow-up interviews were conducted with 30 participants.

Among the most significant findings were clear indications that:

The size of the ad load has no impact on viewer engagement with VOD.
Aided recall of advertised brands was statistically the same (63%-64% for light loads and 58% and 59% for moderate and heavy loads). In addition, VOD ads delivered an uplift of between three and five percentage points across all loads in both interest in finding out about a particular brand, and purchase intent for an advertised brand.

Advertising with VOD does not impact viewer enjoyment.

Between 31% and 38% of participants across all ad loads rated the TV viewing experience as “excellent,” and between 65% and 75% rated the experience as “excellent” or “very good.” This compares favorably to the “excellent” (29%) and “excellent or very good” (66%) for linear television. For all ad loads, enjoyment increased throughout the show. Further, it was clear from post-test, in-depth consumer interviews with randomly selected participants that the presence of ads across a diversity of media platforms has increased acceptance of ads in general.

Consumers are more receptive to longer-form ads on VOD, and that longer-form ads can have a greater impact than traditional 30-second spots.
Viewer interest in finding out more about a particular brand featured in a 90-second ad was 64% higher than interest elicited by the same 90-second ad in linear television, and fully double the interest generated by a VOD 30-second advertisement.

Additional Study Detail and Reports
The Phase II study follows the first phase of AAMP — an in-depth qualitative study that established a baseline understanding of perceptions among industry thought leaders and influencers around dynamic VOD advertising. Public reports discussing the findings of Phase I and Phase II are available for download at aamp.blackarrow.tv. Phase III, a market trial leveraging findings from the prior phases, will be conducted in the first half of 2012.

About AAMP
The Advanced Advertising Media Project (AAMP) is an industry-wide research initiative created to measure the effectiveness of advertising within free, on-demand television programs. The multistage project is comprised of three parts: an in-depth industry survey, a consumer VOD media research laboratory, and a live, in-market trial. AAMP participants include stakeholders from various disciplines around the industry, including 4A’s, A&E Television Networks, ABC, AMC Networks, BlackArrow, CBS, Comcast, CTAM, Digitas, Discovery Communications, Horizon Media, Intel, NBCU and NDS. http://aamp.blackarrow.tv

About the 4A’s
The 4A’s is the national trade association of the advertising agency business. Its membership comprises virtually all of the large, multinational agencies and hundreds of small to mid-sized agencies across the country. The 1,200 member agency offices served by the 4A’s employ 65,000 people; offer a wide range of marketing communications services, and place 80 percent of all national advertising. The management-oriented association helps its members build their businesses, and acts as the industry’s spokesperson with government, media, and the public sector. www.aaaa.org and @4As.

About BlackArrow, Inc.
BlackArrow is a leading worldwide provider of advanced advertising technology for New Television platforms. The company’s multiplatform advertising system is designed specifically for video content distributed over any on-demand platform, enabling networks and content distributors to maximize advertising revenues. BlackArrow is privately held, and backed by Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), Comcast Interactive Capital, Intel Capital (NASDAQ: INTC), Mayfield Fund, Motorola Ventures, NDS Group, LTD., Polaris Venture Partners and Time Warner Cable. The company has offices in New York City and San Jose, Calif. http://www.blackarrow.tv

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BlackArrow is a trademark of BlackArrow, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.