Overture Services has made Leonard Stein its chief legal officer. Stein, whose legal experience covers litigation, antitrust, intellectual property and corporate governance, has recently held executive and legal counsel posts at QRS Corporation and Buzzsaw.com. For 16 years, he worked at the law firm of Steefel, Levitt & Weiss, where he became partner in 1988. He will report to Overture president and CEO Ted Meisel.
“Lenny’s seasoned legal and business perspective will be invaluable to Overture as the company expands its commercial search service,” Meisel said. “He joins a strong legal team that has made many critical contributions to our company and will be an important component of our success going forward.”
Stein’s appointment follows closely on an ad deal the search firm entered with software developer Gator, which has been the target of numerous lawsuits brought by online publishers. He succeeds Joshua Metzger, the company’s SVP of business affairs, who joined Overture in March 1999. Metzger is leaving to pursue various projects, the company said.
Carat Interactive has created and launched an online campaign for digital phone service provider Vonage, using rich media and skyscraper ad units. For the next several months, the ads will run on a list of properties that includes Yahoo!, CNET, UGO and MSN. The campaign emphasizes Vonage’s premium unlimited plan.
“The online campaign will help us source consumers efficiently,” said Dean Harris, VP of marketing at Vonage. “Online advertising represents the ultimate test market and through our online efforts we are achieving our aggressive customer acquisition goals.”
GotMarketing has partnered with Yahoo! to create a version of its Campaigner e-mail marketing software under the Yahoo! Australia & NZ brand. The agreement will let users of Yahoo! Australia & NZ Store, an e-commerce application for small businesses, employ GotMarketing’s e-mail tools while retaining the look, feel and association of Yahoo!
“Our integration of GotMarketing’s Campaigner email marketing tools supports our ongoing strategy of offering services that can improve customer service and drive revenues for our small business clients,” said Brian Boys, commerce manager for Yahoo! Australia & NZ.
Campaigner has been an integrated component of Yahoo!’s U.S.-based small business suite for approximately two years. This deal is part of GotMarketing’s strategy to expand internationally with Yahoo!
Waggener Edstrom has named Matt McGinnis as account supervisor and Amy Drozd as account executive for its office in Austin, Texas, which provides support for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the Texas Nanotechnology Initiative (TNI) and Vignette Corp.
McGinnis, most recently a director for tech-focused PR firm Armstrong Kendall, will serve clients AMD and Vignette. Drozd comes to Waggener Edstrom from AMD, where she helped coordinate AMD’s analyst relations efforts.
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