Show me the money: StumbleUpon hires a VP of sales for revenue growth

StumbleUpon kicked its turnaround into higher gear Monday with the hire of its first-ever vice president of sales.

Teal Newland, a former Digitas executive and Disney brand strategist, has joined the long-running web discovery engine and will oversee StumbleUpon’s advertising sales efforts, the company announced Monday.

StumbleUpon, the random click-to-uncover-the-web service, is a startup created by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, and Ram Shriram. The site first launched in 2001, was acquired by eBay (where it nearly lost all relevance) in 2007 for $75 million, and then was sold back to its original founders in 2009.

The then newly independent company fought its way back from obscurity, landed $17 million more in funding, and surpassed 20 million users in October of last year. The reborn startup says it now serves more than 1.2 billion content recommendations each month.

As a popular serendipitous content discovery aide, StumbleUpon has managed to attract 75,000 brands, publishers, and marketers to its Paid Discovery platform. The ad product, akin to Facebook’s Sponsored Stories offering, allows advertisers to promote and target their content in a holistic, site-appropriate fashion.

Newland, who has the hook-up with big brands such as Delta and Intel through her former Digitas gig, has been brought on board to hawk the Paid Discovery platform and help the now 11-year-old company bring in more revenue.

StumbleUpon has offices in San Francisco and New York. Newland will be based in the New York office. The company declined to disclose revenue information.

Photo credit: StumbleUpon