Ex-lastminute.com bosses take over at classified ads site
Two ex-lastminute.com marketing chiefs – Duncan Horton and Stuart Parish – have taken over at independent classified advertisement site Freeads.co.uk.
The new management team is backed by Clive Jacobs, founder of Holiday Autos, who bought a major stake in the business earlier this year. The original founder of Freeads.co.uk retains a share.
Horton oversees the day-to-day running of Freeads.co.uk from its base in Windsor as chief executive. He is supported by Parish – formerly head of marketing at lastminute.com – who has taken on the role of marketing director.
The company relaunched its website this week with a new look and feel and additional categories.
Horton said: “Freeads.co.uk launched in 2001 and has seen immense organic growth in its first six years of trading, and now has more than one million users per month.
“We believe the business has great potential and are aiming to at least treble the volume of unique ads from the over 55,000 per day to around 150,000 in the next six months.
“This is an exciting time to enter the online classified market. Online is the fastest growing sector in the classified arena and Freeads.co.uk is the fastest growing classified website in the UK. It’s predicted that the internet will overtake radio to become the world’s fourth-largest advertising medium by next year.
“Just as circulation for newspapers, the traditional home of classified ads, is stagnating the online market is taking off with the classified marketplace alone seeing around 4.5 million users per week.
“We’ve got lots more planned for Freeads.co.uk in our bid to make it the UK’s number one classified site so watch this space.”
Freeads.co.uk features 10 categories with household and motors being the largest sectors.
Phil Davies
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