文章基本信息

标题：If at First: Omni-Net.com Becomes Phase2Media - Internet sales company Phase2Media, former ad sales firm Omni-Net.com
作者：Sloane Lucas
期刊名称：Brandweek
印刷版ISSN：1064-4318
出版年度：1999
卷号：April 12, 1999
出版社：Nielsen Business Publications

If at First: Omni-Net.com Becomes Phase2Media - Internet sales company Phase2Media, former ad sales firm Omni-Net.com

Sloane Lucas

Former Turner Interactive sales executive Richy Glassberg is launching internet sales firm Phase2Media. Glassberg hopes Phase2 will be a global phoenix rising from the ashes of Omni-Net.com, the defunct ad sales firm that he joined earlier this year.

Phase2Media has forged an alliance with San Mateo, Calif.-based NetGravity which will provide its AdCenter ad management technology, and Glassberg boasts 25 "handshake agreements" with Web sites. Additional investors should be announced this week.

In January Glassberg left his post as general manager of Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting Sales, New York, to join Omni-Net.com, which was owned by Los Angeles-based Enhanced Services. When Enhanced couldn't secure adequate funding, Glassberg offered to buy the assets--the name, the URL and his own contract.

The only tangible asset Phase2Media has kept was the sub-lease of its offices near Manhattan's Grand Central Station. "We felt it was important to make a clean break," said Glassberg of the name change, although Phase2's ownership of Omni-Net prevents anyone from "resurrecting" the company Phase2Media will officially open its doors on May 1.

Unlike his competitors, Glassberg has no plans to develop proprietary software. "I want to build the best sales team," he said. "I don't want to be a technology company."

While the NetGravity alliance is not exclusive, "It's certainly a preferred partnership," said NetGravity chairman and CEO John Danner. The agreement with Phase2Media will "allow us to get a lot more mid-tier accounts than we have in the past," he continued.

Two of the sales veterans who have joined the company are Tom Mannion, formerly Eastern regional director of sales for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based PointCast, as the firm's senior vice president of ad sales, and R. Scott Ford, previously executive vice president of Deja News in New York, who becomes senior vice president of network partnerships and business development.