Spotter Hires Damon Berger as EVP of Trade Construction, Operations

Spotter, a startup that can pay YouTube creators money up entrance for monetization rights to their video libraries, has employed virtual media veteran Damon Berger as government VP of commercial building and operations.

Berger maximum lately used to be leader advertising officer at children and circle of relatives leisure corporate WildBrain. Previous to that, he served as VP, head of virtual engagement for toy large Mattel, and labored at now-defunct YouTube writer community Fullscreen (then owned by way of AT&T/WarnerMedia) as VP of world strategic partnerships.

In 2010, Berger and Shira Lazar co-founded What’s Trending, a information community hosted by way of Lazar overlaying YouTube tendencies and personalities. Previous to that, he used to be director of virtual advertising at twentieth Century Fox and had labored as an inventive building supervisor at ABC Studios.

At Spotter, Berger will focal point on creating relationships with large-scale creators, lead technique round creating partnerships with established manufacturers and organizations, and lend a hand force company enlargement alternatives. He began on the corporate June 1 and can cut up his time between Denver and Spotter’s L.A. headquarters.

“Damon has spent his occupation forging significant relationships inside media and leisure and we stay up for harnessing his enjoy to create much more price for the creators we paintings with,” Aaron DeBevoise, Spotter’s founder and CEO, mentioned in a remark supplied to Selection.

Berger commented, “I’ve lengthy believed that creators are the way forward for the leisure trade and it’s been so thrilling to paintings to empower creators over the last decade and boost up that development. I noticed the affect Spotter used to be making at the writer degree and inside the broader ecosystem and knew it used to be a spot the place I may just lend my hobby and reviews to even additional increase this trade.”

Berger is the newest addition to Spotter’s management group. To this point this 12 months, Spotter has employed Rob Gabel, founding father of Tubular Labs and a Netflix alum, as leader technique officer; Monica Khan, veteran of Meta and YouTube, as head of writer group; and Derek Reynolds, previously world head of commercial affairs for YouTube Originals, as EVP of criminal and trade affairs.

Spotter used to be based in 2019 by way of DeBevoise, who previously co-founded YouTube content material networks Machinima and StyleHaul. In February, the corporate introduced $200 million in investment led by way of Japan’s SoftBank. In keeping with Spotter, the financing offers it a valuation of $1.7 billion. The investment, alongside Spotter’s reinvestment into the trade, offers it some $1 billion to spend with YouTube creators.

Up to now, the corporate has paid greater than $450 million to creators and has offers with 200-plus channels, together with MrBeast, Dude Absolute best and Like Nastya.