Execs and Accounts for April 11, 2002

Overture Vice President of Technology Paul Ryan has been promoted to chief technology officer. In this new role, Ryan will continue to lead the technology team leadership while picking up additional responsibility for the core technologies that support the company’s business. Ryan will also oversee research and development as well as new product initiatives. Prior to joining Overture , he was chief information officer at Delray Farms, where he built the systems and process infrastructure for a startup grocery retail chain in Chicago. Ryan also spent more than three years at Deloitte & Touche, serving a variety of industrial, retail, and financial services clients in the strategy and IT practice.

In addition, Dan Morefield has been appointed to the newly created position of chief information officer. Morefield will manage Overture’s engineering and technical operations functions and will be responsible for building and enhancing reliable and scalable systems to assist in serving Overture’s 53,000 advertisers and thousands of affiliate partners worldwide.

24/7 Real Media has picked up AccuWeather.com, an online weather source, as a new client on its Open AdStream ad serving solution. The transition will initially be between hosted solutions, with AccuWeather.com migrating to Open AdStreamCENTRAL from DoubleClick’s DART. Within a year from migration, the site will then move from Open AdStreamCENTRAL to Open AdStream LOCAL, which will permit 24/7 Real Media advertisers to target their message to any combination of all zip codes.

Online marketer Yesmail has made four appointments to its management team. Joining Yesmail’s executive ranks are industry veterans Dave Linhardt, senior vice president of data services; Edward Henrich, vice president of client services; Daniel Zamudio, vice president of strategic national accounts; and Bruce Sattley, vice president of product marketing. Henrich, Zamudio and Sattley join Yesmail from Post Communications, the assets of which were acquired by Yesmail in December 2001. Linhardt was most recently founder and CEO of e360 Insight, a start-up CRM consultancy and direct marketing ASP.

Yesmail Chief Executive Officer David Menzel said, “These key hires will help us accelerate our business growth by developing new products, establishing new customer and partner relationships and serving our clients.”

Unicast has picked up 50 new advertisers in the first quarter of 2002. The rich media firm attributes much of this growth to the recent introduction of the Superstitial 300, which supports up to 300K in file size and 30 seconds in length, making it suitable for television spot conversion and enabling integrated offline and online messaging.

Lumina Americas, a cross-channel marketer focused on the U.S. Hispanic and Latin American markets, has been tapped by Nike to be its agency of record for the Latin America region.

Interep Interactive’s Cybereps, a San Francisco-based rep firm, has hired Eric DeRise to join the company in the newly created position of vice president of sales. DeRise will be based in Los Angeles and report to John Durham, COO of Interep Interactive. Prior to joining Cybereps, he was vice president of sales for Zonfire, a division of L90 since October 2000. Before that, he was director of network sales for Engage Media from 1999 to 2000. In 1999 DeRise was with Adsmart as its director of Southwest sales.

Adam Guild, president of Interep, said, “Hiring Eric will help propel Cybereps into the top ranks of the ad networks in the industry, an area previously underdeveloped for us.”

Internet Billing Company (iBill) has chosen to outsource its Web site analysis needs to WebSideStory in an effort to gain instant insight into online customer behavior. iBill, which offers e-commerce solutions, will use WebSideStory’s Web analytics service, HitBox Enterprise, to help improve its return on investment in marketing campaigns, increase visitor loyalty, and drive sales.

HitBox Enterprise’s visitor segmentation feature allows iBill to identify content preferences and behavior patterns of different visitor groups, such as members versus non-registered users. iBill also uses the service to see where its best customers come from, as well as to pinpoint possible bottlenecks in the purchase path.

High Road Communications, a full-service public relations agency servicing North America, has been named agency of record for Padcom, wireless data software company. High Road will drive Padcom’s North American PR campaign.

Tacoda Systems, a marketing data integrator, has named Anne Hunter to the newly created position of director of sales. Her last role as director of sales and ad operations at 24/7 Real Media gave her oversight of account management for top agency clients as well as the network’s internal operations and email divisions. She started with Real Media in 1998 and served the company in a number of different roles through Real Media’s merger with 24/7, including eastern region sales manager, director of sales development and director of sales and ad operations. Before Real Media, Hunter worked for Hearst New Media and Technology’s HomeArts.com, where she served as associate marketing manager and ad manager.

E-mail marketer e-Dialog has hired William Gorski as executive vice president of professional services. Gorski comes to e-Dialog after five years as vice president and director of marketing at Digitas, where he handled strategic planning and development of cross-channel marketing programs for a list of accounts that included General Motors and Xerox. Gorski has also held key marketing positions at Fidelity Investments, Ford Motor Company, and Lexus.

SmartDM, a Nashville-based direct marketing firm, has been tapped by Gaylord Entertainment to be a direct marketing services partner. SmartDM will help Gaylord create and execute direct marketing programs and will be responsible for strategy and execution of Gaylord’s direct mail and email initiatives. The company is also overseeing an initiative to create a central marketing data warehouse, which will ultimately serve as the foundation for Gaylord’s direct marketing programs.

The marketing data warehouse will centralize all relevant customer data. SmartDM will help identify opportunities to drive revenue through repeat businesses and cross sell in both the meeting planner and leisure business segments. The warehouse will be integrated and maintained using DirectTR@K, SmartDM’s proprietary direct marketing campaign management system in ASP platform. DirectTR@K will also be used to assess the performance of marketing initiatives as well as provide business intelligence on new revenue opportunities and strategies.

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