Back in January, Advertising Age named Tribal DDB the global agency of the year—the first digital shop to receive that honor. While the award had more to do with Tribal DDB’s growth figures, as opposed to its creativity, it was a heady achievement for a 10-year-old digital shop, itself a subsidiary of Omnicom Group’s DDB Worldwide, to have bested the established creative shops. So what did the agency’s founder CEO Matt Freeman decide to do as an encore? Instead of moving up to a higher post within the Omnicom/DDB family, he’s preparing to take the CEO post at OTCBB-traded kid-focused media company and ad network GoFish. He replaces outgoing CEO Michael Downing, who founded the company in 2003. I spoke to Freeman about his decision to leave the agency business behind, how he plans to refocus GoFish’s (OTCBB: GOFH) ad efforts and the problems associated with creating brand advertising in an industry that cares mostly about clicks.

-- Transcending digital: After winning the AdAge honor for helping Tribal DDB transcend the digital category and achieve recognition as a creative agency in its own right, Freeman said it was time to do something a little different. “A smooth transition was very important to me. Tribal DDB is my baby and I want to see it succeed. [The Ad Age global agency award] became cap for me – after that, I didn’t see what else I could contribute. “

-- The other 99 percent: Freeman: “Ironically, there’s been so much attention on digital media, but most of it is on Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and search and direct marketing. My observation is brand advertising is being under-served. So that’s what the move to GoFish was about—trying to bring some innovation, energy and real creativity to online brand advertising. If you think about it, it’s about addressing the other 99 percent of the audience. The logic right now is to focus on the 1 percent that actually click through. You know intuitively that there is some contribution from the other 99 percent – there’s this enormous amount of dollars and energy put against that 99 percent. And GoFish is dedicated to addressing those that don’t click.” More from my interview with Freeman after the jump.

Audio of the 7-minute interview is here.

-- Google-obsessed: “It has been a Google-obsessed world for the last two years. From Wall St. to Silicon Valley… a lot of the portals have lost their way in our opinion. While [agencies] have the keys to the brand kingdom, they’ve been forced by analysts and others to fight Google at Google’s game. That’s a losing battle. And so, that provides an opportunity for companies like GoFish. There’s a scale logic to Google. And there’s an established, empirical result to working with Google. And I don’t dispute Google’s value at all, but it is not the entire equation. And so, the premise for GoFish is let’s not look at things necessarily that are just about predisposed consumers that are specifically searching for something. But rather, to take consumers that have an interest and match them with advertisers.”

-- World, meet GoFish: Earlier this year, the SF-based online video service grew into online ad network as well. But GoFish’s problem is that it isn’t that well known in either category. Freeman’s first goal is to the company some more attention. Freeman: “We want to heighten awareness because it’s a fairly unknown company for its scale. It has 65 million uniques per month; it’s a large company in terms of its reach, but it’s a small company in terms of it’s broader recognition in the marketplace.”

• Industry Moves: Tribal DDB CEO Freeman Steps Down To Head Up GoFish
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• MTV Networks Takes Stake In Online Video Site GoFish, In Return For Distribution