Execs & Accounts for December 3, 2003

European search bidding platform Espotting Media has entered a pan-European distribution agreement with online travel company lastminute.com. Under the deal, lastminute.com will incorporate Espotting’s listings on the exit pages of four of its channels. The deal covers five territories, including the U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

Lastminute channels featuring the keyword listings include “hotels,” “flights,” “holidays” and “flight plus hotel” packages. A branded pop-under page will be served to users leaving the hotels channel of the site without purchasing, and will display Espotting’s top five keyword specific listings to the corresponding channel. Espotting’s content editors worked with lastminute.com to select the relevant keywords.

FindWhat.com agreed to buy Espotting Media back in June, but the deal was called into question after FindWhat scrutinized the European company’s books.

E-commerce design firm Fry hired Jason Henry as VP of sales. Fry has worked with Crate and Barrel, Godiva, Eddie Bauer, Brookstone, AAA and Home & Garden Television on e-commerce design and development.

“Jason has the right business development skills and a great level of experience in the retail and CPG markets,” said David Fry, president and CEO.

Permission marketer and interactive ad sales firm I-Network has signed with Real Media Europe to use Open AdStream Central as its exclusive ad serving solution.

“We chose to move our business to Real Media because we were impressed with the new capabilities of the latest version of Open AdStream and the outstanding value they offered,” said Joshua Novick, CEO of I-Network.