While messaging app watchers are waiting for Snap Inc. to announce its IPO, another app has appointed a new CEO. Viber — the messaging app that was acquired by Rakuten in 2014 — has announced Djamel Agaoua as its new CEO.
This is significant because Viber — which has had a promising 800 million downloads but has seen active user growth stall as others like Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger have gained ground — has effectively been operating without a permanent CEO since co-founder Talmon Marco formally stepped away from the role in 2015. (Marco now is working on Juno , a new ridesharing startup.)
Agaoua has already started the job and will be dividing his time between the Bay Area — because Viber wants to rekindle its bid to grow in the U. S. — and Tel Aviv, where Viber is based.
Agaoua is an interesting pick to lead the company for a couple of reasons.
First, he comes from the world of mobile ad tech and had been the CEO of performance advertising specialist MobPartner, which was acquired by Cheetah Mobile in 2015 as part of the latter company’s strategy to move deeper into mobile ads. He stayed on at Cheetah until moving to Viber.
So does his appointment signal a deeper move into mobile ads for Viber?
Viber already has a certain amount of advertising in the form of sponsored stickers and other features (also labelled as sponsored) — which is somewhat in contrast to others like WhatsApp, which originally eschewed paid promotions of any kind, but has, under new owner (and digital advertising giant) Facebook, started to controversially explore this area , too.
