MIVA CEO President Out Of The Firm

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MIVA CEO, President Out Of The Firm

By: David Utter
2006-04-06

The continued poor financial performance of the online advertising firm has led to the company's top leadership departing the company.

Miva (NASD:MIVA) founder and CEO Craig Pisaris-Henderson and President Phillip Thune have both resigned from the firm. The company announced former COO Peter Corrao will step into the CEO's chair, while Seb Bishop gets the president's job along with his chief marketing officer duties. Larry Weber, a MIVA director, becomes the non-executive chairman.

The former FindWhat.com has had trouble finding a profitable formula in online advertising. That has translated to a 2 cents per share adjusted net loss for the fourth quarter of 2005. Worse, the company had to forecast a 7 to 10 cents GAAP EPS loss for the first quarter of 2006.

In late February, the company announced the start of beta testing for its self-service contextual advertising solution. That market becomes more competitive in July, when Microsoft joins Google and Yahoo in joining the competition with its adCenter service after the expiration of its contract with Yahoo's Overture unit for online advertising.

MIVA seems to have the products that should be of interest in the online advertising marketplace, a growing multi-billion dollar market. The company offers traditional pay-per-click solutions as well as pay-per-call.

With the local search market forecast to hit close to $1 billion this year, pay-per-call allows advertisers to connect with callers from the advertisements they run. With growing attention being paid by Google and others to the greater potential offered in modern mobile phones, pay-per-call looks like a lucrative proposition to the company that can get its local search and a pay-per-call offering running on as many mobiles as possible.

That could be a selling point for MIVA's board, should a prospective buyer come calling for the company.

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Tag: MIVA

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View All Articles by David Utter

About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for InternetFinancialNews and WebProNews covering technology and business.


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