Lisa Watts has been appointed CEO extending her current role as CEO of artsHub, a successful niche job board for the creative arts community.

Prior to ArtsHub Lisa was CEO of Advantate, a Search Engine Marketing joint venture between Melbourne IT and Fairfax Digital. Lisa had over four years as general manager of mycareer.com.au during which time she oversaw a period of high growth, built a large national field sales team, and launched a number of new products and niche sites including jobs in retail and the big chair.

Joining her as head of business development is Jay Munro, also ex Mycareer /Fairfax Digital. Jay was previously National Market Development Manager and will be heading up sales for Hippo based in Sydney. The new marketing team will be led by Lee Casey, Artshub consumer marketing manager and will include James Findlay who is a Gen Y marketing specialist.

Lisa Watts said” Over the past three months there has been significant investment in SEO, and as a result Hippo jobs ranks number one in many key phrases relating to part time and casual work.”

“Hippo had been through a rocky ride and went into receivership in May last year, says Lisa Watts, and now we’re confident we can rebuild it into a strong youth brand” .In April 2009, it was announced that Hippo Jobs had been acquired by Classified Ad Ventures.

Watts says” The timing for a re-launch is perfect as the job market rebounds. We’ve already returned to the branding to the original Hippo and have a number of product improvements scoped and in development. The iconic brand of the Hippo, the strong recall from the 15 to 254 year old demographic and a consistent base of unique visitors, even without any marketing campaigns gives the team reason to believe the future looks bright for the business.”

Simon Baker, CEO of Classified Ad Ventures, and now Chairman of hippo.com.au, says:

“Niche jobs sites are a growing opportunity. Managers have less time than ever to trawl through the hundreds of irrelevant CVs they often receive from generalist jobs sites. Our previous investment in artshub.com.au proves that a highly targeted audience is the key to delivering a smaller number of quality candidates that meet advertisers’ requirements.”

Classified Ad Ventures was founded by Simon Baker, the former CEO and Managing Director of the REA Group Ltd, in mid 2008. Simon is a leading global expert in the field of online classified advertising and during his time at the REA Group he grew revenues from $4 million in the 2001 financial year to $155 million in 2008.

For media enquires Lee Casey Ph: +61 3 9018 7090 Mob: 0419 519 481

Feb 9 2009