Double Fusion Grows In-Game Empire with Quartet of Execs

In-game ad network Double Fusion added four executives to its management team, two of them from News Corp. properties. The hires come a mere week after the company recruited Electronic Arts’ former national sales director, Julie Shumaker, as VP of sales.

Jennifer McLean joins as senior director of marketing. She was previously director of marketing at IGN Entertainment, a role in which she worked on initiatives like Club.IGN.com and planning for E3. Channing Chor comes from Fox Interactive Media and will head up business development in his new post.

Additional hires include Alex Sood as senior director of legal affairs and operations and Nir Hasson as senior programmer. The announcement of the four additions to Double Fusion is follow-on to last week’s hire of former EA exec Julie Shumaker.

“I think them bringing on Julie Shumaker is a fantastic movie,” said Tim Harris, SVP of Play, a Denuo Group Company. “It’s a pretty small community of people who know what they’re doing in the space and she’s one of the most visible.”

Taken together with the company’s recent addition of dynamic 3D placements to its stable of ad products, the hires strengthen Double Fusion’s already strong position in the in-game advertising space.

“It’s a good step, there’s plenty to do that’s going to get somebody like me more excited, and the clients more excited,” said Harris, in regards to the flexibility a product like the 3D placements add to a campaign.

Developments in the in-game ad space have heated up in the wake of Microsoft’s acquisition of Massive and its forthcoming integration with MSN functionality, Conventional wisdom is that the market will support a much smaller number of established ad networks and management platforms than are extant in Web advertising, since there are far fewer publishers.

“In the last year or so [Double Fusion has] really assembled good people on their team,” said Harris. “They’re positioned well. If you put Massive, Double Fusion, AdScape [and other in-game ad networks] in a competitive set, it’s still anybody’s game.”