• by Joe Mandese , November 7, 2005

Adam Gerber, who until recently headed up the new media strategy for MediaVest and big clients like Coca-Cola Co. and Procter & Gamble, has joined Internet TV start-up Brightcove. He is the latest in a succession of new media experts to leave Madison Avenue for the supply side, following Bob Flood, the former Optimedia International executive vice president-director of electronic media, who last week joined MTV Networks as senior vice president-integrated media platforms (MDN Nov. 1).

Gerber, meanwhile, has joined Brightcove as vice president of advertising products and strategy, and will be responsible for developing new forms of advertising that leverage Brightcove's TV distribution model.

Brightcove, which calls itself "an open advertising platform," is one of the companies racing to develop an infrastructure for distributing TV programming over the Internet. Founded by Internet pioneer Jeremy Allaire in 2004, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company has been aggressively recruiting a management team that includes senior executives from Allaire, Macromedia, ATG, Comcast, Lycos, and News Corp. Concurrent with Gerber's appointment, Brightcove also announced that it has hired Dina Roman as vice president of national advertising sales from vice president-general sales manager of Discovery Communications, where she led the interactive advertising sales team for six years.

The hires signal a major push by companies developing new television advertising platforms. At MTV Networks, Flood will be responsible for all new platform sales for both the music and comedy networks. He reports to Hank Close, executive vice president-ad sales for the MTV Networks Music and Comedy Group. Close said the new platforms would range from "on-demand to wireless."

At Optimedia, Flood was a key player in the development of new TV advertising formats for clients ranging from BMW's BMW Films cross-platform deals to buys for T-Mobile and Garnier that covered video-on-demand, broadband video downloads, and interactive and addressable satellite TV.

Both Flood and Gerber worked for units of Publicis Groupe, and were key members of industry-enhanced TV development committees.

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