Execs & Accounts for June 1, 2007

Yahoo Chief Technology Officer and Head of the Technology Group Zod Nazem announced his retirement this week. After 11 years with Yahoo, Nazem will retire early this month. Yahoo co-founder and Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang will act as the interim head of the technology group until a replacement is found.

Ask.com appointed Mark Stockford as senior vice president of operations. The search engine and wholly-owned business of IAC tasked Stockford with planning and operations oversight of Ask.com’s technology and engineering departments as well as its data center operations.

WunderLOOP landed seven international customers. The European behavioral advertising and content targeting company has signed on new customers including: Tom Group, Tomorrow Focus AG, Telecom Italia, CondeNast Verlag, One Italia, Ad2Net, and etype.

Primedia Automotive Digital signed with Revenue Science for its 60 automotive Web sites. Using Revenue Science’s technology, the car sites will segment users based on their online behavior.

Los Angeles Times Media Group hired Scott Sullivan as CTO for LATimes.com. Sullivan was chief information officer for Edmunds.com and senior vice president of technology operations and engineering for Yahoo/Overture Services.

ComScore hired Marvin Pollack as head of marketing communications. The online measurement firm hired away Pollack from his post as vice president, corporate communications for Océ.

Tacoda promoted Lee Blickstein and added two execs. The behavioral targeting online ad network promoted Blickstein from Eastern region sales manager to director of Eastern advertising sales. The company also appointed Brendon Gallagher and Deepak Sharma as sales managers in its New York office.

Merkle added four execs in its interactive services practice. The database marketing agency hired Tom Maggio as senior director of operations, Anne Alden as creative director, Jason Mitcham as director of product strategy and Brett Charney as director of strategic services.

Black Coffee Channel picked Internap’s VitalStream content delivery network. The online platform was created to deliver Black cultural and political news, music and other entertainment, will broadcast live and on-demand video and audio with Internap.

Optiem added two execs. The interactive marketing agency hired Tom Phillips as account manager and Vince Bank as an online content specialist.