Execs & Accounts: Specific Media, GSI Interactive, 4INFO, Velti

Specific Media expanded its East Coast team with new hires. Jeff Valente, director of East Coast sales in New York, left Platform-A’s Advertising.com, to join the ad network. Howard Schiffman will work in the New York office; he previously worked at Beliefnet. John Szumowski, director of sales in Southeast region, will work from the Atlanta office; he previously worked at AOL. Alexandra Masterson left Pandora Media to work in the New York office. Lydia Gomez of Beliefnet; Jackie Guretz of IAC; and Steve Dybsky of Modern Luxury Media, all join the Chicago office

GSI interactive named Michael Summers to lead user research at GSI interactive. Summers will take the newly-created position of senior director of usability. He will develop user research service offerings, engage GSI partners in usability activities, and lead GSI interactive’s eye-tracking lab. Summers previously held key user research roles at Nielsen Norman Group, Scient, and USWeb/CKS. Most recently he built his own consultancy.

4INFO and Velti formed a strategic partnership. The partnership will combine 4INFO’s mobile search and SMS alert service with Velti’s mobile marketing platform. It will create multi-channel mobile advertising opportunities for marketers.

Mobile ad networks Ringleader Digital, JumpTap, and 4INFO are now integrated with SinglePoint. The integration allows the ad networks to access mobile messaging inventory of cable and network and TV shows . Each of the ad networks can tap available inventory on SinglePoint’s SingleBrand ad insertion platform, and insert branded messages onto SMS and MMS text message campaigns tied to TV programs that incorporate viewer participation. Participating networks include Bravo, NBC Universal, MTV, Fox, and The CW.

Operative appointed Mike Hard executive vice president of sales and marketing. Hard was most recently at Microsoft, where he spent over 17 years working in various sales leadership roles. His most recent position was vice president of U.S. digital advertising sales. Operative is an ASP dashboard advertising technology company.

VoloMedia added Mark Sheridan to its team of senior executives. Sheridan, senior director of business development, will work on developing opportunities with content publishers and strategic distribution partnerships for the ad network. He was most recently vice president of business development of Olive Software, and previously director of strategic accounts at Autonomy Software Group.

Barrington Broadcasting selected Marchex for local advertising. Marchex will sell Barrington’s 23 network-affiliated television station online lead packages and business profile pages to Marchex advertising customers under its own brand.