Execs & Accounts for Friday the 13th of October, 2006

Palm Inc. has named Y&R San Francisco as agency of record for its worldwide advertising efforts. The move, which resulted from an agency review, ends the company’s seven-year relationship with interactive shop AKQA. According to Palm, Y&R emerged from the review as the agency with the best mix of strategic and creative talent globally.

Carat Fusion has added two to its senior management team in finance and account services. Brian McWilliams, formerly of Cambridge Associates and Leo Burnett, was named SVP and director of finance, based in Carat Fusion’s Boston office. Bill Hewson joins Carat Fusion as VP and director of account services, based in the agency’s New York office. Hewson previously worked at Digitas, Modem Media, and most recently, Tribal DDB.

Behaviorally targeted ad network Tacoda has named Michael Krogermeier VP of corporate strategy and development, a newly created post. He will report to Mark Pinney, Tacoda’s CFO. Krogermeier will focus on identifying and building key strategic relationships and building Tacoda’s international business. He most recently held a similar corporate development role at satellite operator PanAmSat, and has held financial and operational positions at Thomson Business Information and NBC.

Bill Sullivan has joined local media-buying company Centro as managing director for sales, southeast region. Sullivan most recently held the role of national online sales manager at Cox Enterprises, where he coordinated sales efforts across newspaper, TV, radio and online media. He has held senior sales positions with Publicitas North America, BlueFish Concierge, and Expedia.com.

Several interactive agency execs have been chosen as new members of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, and will serve on the jury for the new interactive advertising categories of The Webby Awards. They include Tribal DDB’s CEO Matt Freeman and Kevin Flatt, executive creative director of the agency’s Chicago office; Bob Greenberg, CEO of R/GA; Jeff Benjamin, creative director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky; David Eastman, CEO of Agency.com; and Annie Wong, executive creative director of Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong.

Marchex has made separate contextual advertising agreements with business news sites TheStreet.com and Line56.com. Effective immediately, Marchex’s IndustryBrains subsidiary will serve contextual text ads on each company’s site.

Kontera named Bryan Everett its SVP of sales. Everett has held senior sales roles at LookSmart and Twelve Horses.