Execs & Accounts for November 10, 2003

Unicast named Chad Beasley to head its new Los Angeles office. Prior to joining Unicast, Beasley was media supervisor at Digitas in Boston, working with General Motors, Celebrity Cruises, Delta Air Lines and American Electric Power. Earlier, at Modem Media, he worked with 3M, AT&T, Intel and Kraft Foods. Beasley sits on the Board of the Ad Club Interactive of Los Angeles.

“We are delighted to have Chad on our team spearheading Unicast’s efforts on the West Coast,” said Jason Griswold, VP of national sales and advertiser relations for Unicast. “This market has tripled in size for us in the last six months.”

Agencies and advertisers in L.A. with commitments to Unicast include TBWA Chiat Day, Carat, Zentropy, DDB Entertainment, Honda, Sony Playstation, 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures.

The newspaper division of The E.W. Scripps Company has signed an agreement to deploy Tacoda Systems’ Audience Management System across 15 news sites representing 18 daily newspapers. Scripps will implement the newest version of AMS, 3.1, which features real-time targeting and audience-based frequency capping.

“Tacoda’s Audience Management System is a key part of our plans to offer targeted campaigns that will provide better results for advertisers and a better experience for our Web audience,” said Bob Benz, general manager of interactive media for Scripps newspapers.

This is the second Scripps division to use Tacoda. Earlier in the year, Scripps Networks began deploying AMS on foodnetwork.com, hgtv.com (Home & Garden Television), fineliving.com, and diynetwork.com (Do It Yourself Network.)

Western apparel retailer Shepler’s will use Omniture’s SiteCatalyst to analyze surfing and e-commerce activity on its site, as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns. The company said it wants to deepen its understanding of customers’ online shopping behavior and the impact email sign-ups and catalog requests have on its bottom line.

“We now expect SiteCatalyst to accommodate all of our reporting efforts,” said Trent Minneman, manager of e-commerce for Sheplers.

SiteCatalyst replaces an in-house reporting system, Shepler’s said.

Court TV Online will use 24/7 Real Media’s Open AdStream Central for ad serving. Comprised of Courttv.com, Crime Library and The Smoking Gun, the company said it chose Open AdStream for its targeting capabilities, including geotargeting and delivery based on the behavior of unique users.

“24/7 Real Media was very professional throughout our evaluation period; allowing us to test Open AdStream on our timetable,” said Tom Fitzharris, VP of Court TV Online.

In other ad serving news, game accessories company Mad Catz tapped Falk eSolutions AG for exclusive online ad serving on its GameShark Web site. Falk will handle all ad management for the Web destination, which publishes video game news, previews, and cheat codes.

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