Execs & Accounts for May 10, 2004

WebSideStory hired Thomas Willardson as CFO and picked up two new board members.

Willardson served as senior financial officer for Leap Wireless, a telecommunications company and former unit of Qualcomm. He was also CFO at the Archimedes Technology Group, a plasma physics company.

New board members include James Mahan and James Glynn. Mahan is the founder and chairman of S1 Corp., a developer of ASPs for financial institutions. Glynn most recently held executive positions with San Diego biotech firm Invitrogen.

The Associated Press (AP) signed on to use the ASP version of Tacoda Systems’ audience management system. The behavioral targeting deal covers hundreds of sites in AP’s online distribution network.

“Understanding more about the people who access AP stories, photos and video online is key to establishing the value of the kind of credible, breaking news The Associated Press is known for,” said Jane Seagrave, director of AP Digital. “We believe innovative audience measurement systems like the one developed by Tacoda have enormous potential to translate readership to revenue online.”

E-mail service provider Skylist made several appointments in sales and development, including Lana McGilvray as VP of sales and marketing.

McGilvray joined Skylist in 2002 as director of sales and Marketing. She has also developed marketing programs for Concero, McCann-Erickson Worldwide Advertising, New York Medical College, the City of White Plains, and Columbia University’s graduate business school.

Tony Averbeck, previously of Trilogy Software, fills her shoes as director of sales. The company also hired AOL alum Naeem Kayani as Account Manager and Ivor Clarke as director of development.

Search veteran Jim Barnett joined integrated direct marketer ValueVision’s board of directors. Barnett was most recently president of the search division at Overture, where he led the integration of AltaVista and Fast Web Search products into a new search division. He joined Overture from AltaVista, where he was president and CEO. Earlier, he was president of MyFamily.com, the parent company of genealogy search services Ancestry.com and Rootsweb.com.

ValueClick’s Mediaplex subsidiary signed six MOJO Publisher clients. They include the U.S. Tennis Association’s USTA.com and USOpen.org Web sites, Hollywood.com, comparison shopping site PriceGrabber.com, lad mag FHM’s Web site, and interactive agencies PinPoint Media and Interevco.

Promontory Interfinancial Network hired full-service marketing firm Carton Donofrio Partners. The agency will raise awareness of Promontory’s products and services among potential banking partners and the financial community at large. Interactive services will include site enhancements and interactive tool development.

eNature, a subsidiary of the National Wildlife Federation, signed on to use Burst! Media’s AdDesktop for online ad management.

“With AdDesktop, eNature will be able to offer improved targeting and rich media solutions for advertisers while saving time on reporting and billing internally,” said eNature President Chris Krueger.