Tom Gerace

Thomas August Gerace (born December 21, 1970 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is the serial entrepreneur and market-innovator responsible for disruptive innovations such as founding Be Free, the first affiliate-marketing company, and SMAC, a committee to create a common vocabulary, standard buying units, and uniform measurement methods for social media. In December 2010, he launched Skyword, a content production platform. Currently, Gerace serves as CEO and founder of Skyword.

Education

Gerace received a Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies, magna cum laude, from Harvard University in 1993. He was a senior business analyst at the Harvard Business School, where he authored case studies including "The National Information Infrastructure and the Internet." He also assisted with the creation of the curriculum for the "Managing in the Marketspace" course within the MBA program.

Be Free

In March 1996, Gerace and his brother, Samuel P. Gerace, Jr., founded Be Free, a publicly traded online marketing services company. Gerace was the Chief Marketing Officer and was awarded two U.S. Patents (5,848,396 and 5,991,735) for profiling computer users and targeting advertising based on that profiling. He raised more than $200 million and launched both U.S. and European operations. Gerace left Be Free when the company was acquired by ValueClick in 2002.

Skyword

In December 2010, Gerace launched Skyword, a content production platform that allows users to efficiently create content at scale and reach customers through search and the social web. The platform also offers a suite of services to help clients plan, execute and manage their content marketing programs. IBM, Bounty (brand), The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch, Education.com and Everyday Health are among the leading brands and media companies that use the Skyword Platform to create brand-aligned content.^[1]

In October 2012, United Way Worldwide^[2] and AutoTrader.com^[3] announced they had signed on with Skyword to improve their content strategy and increase content production.

Other ventures

Gerace later served for two years as Senior Vice President, Marketing for National Leisure Group (NLG), a $1 billion annual seller of travel. He is also the founding committee chair of SMAC, the Social Media Ad Consortium, and industry group launched in September 2008. SMAC is, according to its own description, "A group of advertising, communications, brand management and social media executives coming together to create a common vocabulary, standard buying units, and uniform measurement methods for social media." In addition, Gerace is the founder and CEO of the social networking site Gather.com (currently defunct), where members shared user-generated content online and earned a portion of the company’s advertising revenue. Gather.com was founded in 2005 by Gerace and the American Public Media Group (APMG), whose CEO and president was Gather's chairman, William H. Kling. As of today (February 23, 2015), gather.com no longer allows access in a social networking fashion as it only generates its own news feeds. The general public is no longer allowed access to its own content on the site.

References

1. "How IBM’s Content Strategy Got IBM Midsize Insider into Google News and Sent Traffic Soaring". Content Marketing Institute. September 13, 2012. External link in |publisher= (help)
2. Ryan Joe (October 3, 2012). "Content marketing in a United Way". Direct Marketing News. External link in |publisher= (help)
3. "AutoTrader.com Embraces Innovative Skyword Technology to Scale Its Content Operations". Yahoo! Finance. October 16, 2012. External link in |publisher= (help)

External links