Adauction.com CEO Jerry Machovina has raided his former
employer, AT&T Broadband, to staff up that online media-exchange operation.
Machovina -- who himself was lured away from the MSO by
Adauction chairman and former AT&T Broadband CEO Leo J. Hindery Jr. -- last week
announced the hiring of five new Adauction staffers. Three of them are former AT&T
Broadband executives: Adauction's new senior vice president of sales Bruce Thomas,
senior vice president of marketing Derek Mattson and senior vice president of operations
Greg Hall.
In a statement announcing the appointments, Machovina said
Adauction is "moving ahead to form the premier media exchange representing both
traditional and non-traditional types of advertising."
Adauction aims to bring buyers and sellers together to bid
on sponsorships in an online marketplace. Opportunities range from a package tied to two
Indy Racing League cars to packages linked to the International Academy of Digital Arts
& Sciences' May 11 Webby Awards.
Thomas was formerly vice president of national sales at
AT&T Media Services and its predecessor company, Tele-Communications Inc. There,
Thomas and Machovina were behind the signing of Kraft Foods' landmark advertising
deal in February 1998, which was to start with geodemographic targeting and would
ultimately lead to household-addressable advertising.
Mattson was chief operating officer at Vehix.com -- which
Machovina helped establish as AutoMallUSA.com while at AT&T Broadband -- and was
earlier at AT&T Media Services as regional vice president. An automotive online buying
service, AutoMallUSA was renamed Vehix.com in February.
Hall was vice president of technical operations at AT&T
Broadband and worked on interactive-advertising technology.
The non-AT&T executives are Wade Layton, named
Adauction's chief financial officer, and Jim O'Neill, vice president of
information systems. Layton previously was a Bank of New York vice president, while
O'Neill was a program manager at Unison Systems Inc.
Last month, Machovina signed former Multichannel
Advertising Bureau International managing director Connie Pettit as senior vice president
of international and Frank Woodbeck, a former ABC Radio vice president, as senior vice
president of radio.
