MediaWhiz today announced it has appointed Thomas Lanzetta to Chief Financial Officer and Danay Escanaverino to Director of Marketing. The appointments are a key part of MediaWhiz’s efforts to integrate its multiple business operations as it continues to grow and acquire new companies.
“We are excited to welcome Tom as the new CFO of MediaWhiz. His strong financial management experience will be invaluable as we integrate our multiple divisions and continue to expand over the coming months,” stated Jason Cohen, Co-President, MediaWhiz. “We are also pleased to promote Danay to Director of Marketing. She has been an essential member of our team over the past several years, and in this new role she will greatly assist MediaWhiz as we continue to grow in 2007 and beyond,” stated Yannick Tessier, Co-President, MediaWhiz.
Thomas Lanzetta has over 15 years of financial management experience, including 10 years of experience managing world class internet professional service firms. Mr. Lanzetta was most recently Chief Operating Officer of Agency.com (formerly NASDAQ: ACOM), a leading global internet development and marketing firm. In this role, he was responsible for driving the financial and strategic performance of Agency’s multiple offices worldwide with more than 500 employees. Mr. Lanzetta was also part of a team that managed the company through a successful IPO.
LBB Readers, I am very excited to announce the addition of Neil and Cameron as regular contributors and TLA Evangelists! More details on their role with TLA here.
MediaWhiz today announced it has acquired Atlanta-based Online Media Promotions, LLC, which is known in the industry as Monetizeit. This acquisition expands MediaWhiz’s online marketing services platform to give it deep expertise in a number of lead generation vertical markets, including insurance and financial services. Lake Capital, a private equity firm that invests in growing services companies, first invested in MediaWhiz in August 2005 and provided additional capital to fund this transaction.
Founded in 2003 by Steve Wadley, Roger Dowd and Joe Hegedus, Monetizeit is a leader in the online lead generation space. The Company is recognized as a “one-stop shop” for internet advertising, handling all aspects of the process, including idea generation, product and offer testing, creative design, marketing and implementation of an effective long-term customer acquisition strategy for its clients. Monetizeit will continue to operate under its current name, with continued leadership from its existing management team.
“We are thrilled to have the management team, employees and clients of Monetizeit join the MediaWhiz platform. We have been using our online media distribution channels to drive traffic to Monetizeit’s offers for a number of years and this integrated partnership will significantly strengthen our ability to provide their clients with large volumes of high quality leads,” said MediaWhiz co-president Yannick Tessier.
“Adding Monetizeit’s strong lead generation capabilities is a perfect fit for our strategic growth plan. Not only will the acquisition bring further size and scale to our lead generation division, but it also allows us the opportunity to pursue cross-selling opportunities into new vertical channels,” noted Jason Cohen, co-president of MediaWhiz.
“We are excited to join MediaWhiz and gain access to new client relationships, infrastructure and additional distribution channels to support our clients’ marketing goals. With the support of the MediaWhiz team, we are confident that we can continue to rapidly grow our core business, while creating a platform for expansion into additional vertical markets,” said Steve Wadley, president of Monetizeit.
MediaWhiz has acquired Cincinnati-based Text Link Ads (TLA) to expand MediaWhiz’s online marketing services platform to include text link advertisements. Lake Capital, a private equity firm that invests in growing services companies, first invested in MediaWhiz in August 2005 and provided additional capital to fund this transaction.
Founded in 2003 by Patrick Gavin, president, and Bill Fish, chief financial officer, TLA is the leader in the text link advertisement and related services space, providing an automated, comprehensive marketplace for advertisers and publishers. TLA is recognized for having the broadest and fastest growing network of advertisers and publishers, a user-friendly platform, and a high degree of flexibility in ad type and placement. TLA will continue to operate under the Text Link Ads name, with continued leadership from its existing management team.
“We are thrilled to be working with Patrick and his team to bring this new service offering to our thousands of publisher and advertiser relationships, while also being able to cross-sell MediaWhiz’s existing services to TLA’s growing client base,” said Jason Cohen, co-president of MediaWhiz.
“Adding TLA’s recognized expertise in text link advertising is a perfect fit with our strategy of creating one of the broadest platforms of online marketing solutions to meet the diverse needs of our advertisers,” noted MediaWhiz co-president Yannick Tessier.
“This is an exciting time for our team and our clients. We have found a great partner that will be able to help our publishers and advertisers profitably drive more traffic to their web sites. We are looking forward to delivering more great products and even better service in the months ahead as a result of this partnership,” said Patrick Gavin, president of Text Link Ads.
RBC Capital Markets served as the exclusive financial advisor to Text Link Ads on the transaction. No transaction terms have been disclosed.
MediaWhiz announced the launch of WhiteDelivery List Management (www.whitedelivery.com), which will offer transactional message delivery as an added service to its current and new e-mail list management clients.
Transactional messages include information that many companies rely on for day-to-day communications with clients. Message types include auto responders, newsletters, order confirmations, account updates, shipping confirmations, and privacy policy changes.
WhiteDelivery List Management, formerly known as GRS List Management, has been rebranded as part of the expansion of the division’s services. Interactive marketing firm Global Resource Systems (GRS) merged with MediaWhiz in April 2006 to form one of the largest providers of online performance marketing services; as part of the merger, GRS List Management was renamed WhiteDelivery.
“We are excited to offer transactional message delivery as a new service to our list management clients, in conjunction with the industry leading services for which we at WhiteDelivery are known,” states Yannick Tessier, Co-President of MediaWhiz and Founder of GRS.
“The business solutions offered by WhiteDelivery List Management are a key part of the integrated suite of programs MediaWhiz makes available to its customers, which also includes affiliate marketing, lead generation and search marketing,” states Jason Cohen, Founder and Co-President of MediaWhiz.
