Snakk Media expands with NZ office opening

Snakk Media continues to expand across New Zealand, with the company opening a new Auckland office and making an executive appointment.

The smartphone and tablet advertising specialist chairman and co-founder Derek Handley confirmed this will be the first sales-focussed role to be based outside of Australia, where the company’s revenue generation activities are currently focussed.

Rowan Spinks, formerly Group Sales manager with APN News & Media Group, will manage the growing number of New Zealand opportunities the company is facing since listing on the stock exchange a little more than two months ago.

Spinks’ first official day at the Snakk NZ sales office will be Wednesday, 22 May, and he will be based at the company’s Auckland headquarters.

Snakk Group CEO Mark Ryan says the Kiwi market is rapidly catching up to the mobile advertising growth experienced in other countries and the time was right to appoint someone of Spinks' calibre in the country.

“We’ve made a senior appointment to reflect the growth in sales opportunities and to respond to the significant interest Snakk has generated in the New Zealand market since listing here," he says.

“We saw a good year-on-year increase in mobile advertising revenue in the last quarter of 2012, and the time is right for Snakk to have a larger presence in New Zealand.

"This country is also a fantastic place to trial and pilot new initiatives and technologies, and we have some really exciting plans in the works for this."

Interactive Advertising Bureau figures report that New Zealand mobile advertising was at its highest in 2012, with an annual growth of 176%.

The proliferation of smartphones and decreasing mobile data plan costs are cited as some of the reasons underpinning this growth.

Handley also says the company is pleased with the response to its Share Purchase Plan (SPP) and that shareholders may have their applications scaled back due to healthy demand for the capital raising initiative.

The new capital raised will go toward funding further expansion into new regions or sales teams and exploring strategic investment opportunities.

“This is a really exciting time for Snakk,” Handley says.

“The response from investors has been great and a significant number of new investors registered before the Record Date (1 May) to specifically take part in the SPP and benefit from the significant discount to the current market price."

Registered shareholders have until 5pm on Tuesday May 21 to take part in the SPP to invest up to $15,000 of shares at a fixed price of 12 cents per share.

The average trading price of Snakk over the last 30 days prior to the SPP opening was greater than 15c and closed at 15.5c on the 14th of May.

Snakk generates revenue every time an ad uses its networks to appear on a smartphone or tablet’s apps, sites, games and social networks, with revenue generated from both the advertiser paying to use the ad space and the publishers serving the ad to its audiences.