Online media exchange Adauction.com April 24 changes its name to OneMediaPlace (www.onemediaplace.com) and announces a $25 million investment from CMGI @Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of CMGI. The San Francisco company offers online media buying for TV, radio, outdoor, print and online media. The name change also reflects the company's new business model, which is no longer based on a real-time auction.

"[Adauction.com] was too narrow,'' said Jerry Machovina, president-CEO of OneMediaPlace. "It misstated what our business plan is; the new name is far more definitive. At the end of the day, we want OneMediaPlace to be the desktop loyalty destination for people on both the buy and sell sides.'' The announcement follows Adauction's March 29 partnership with CMGI's Engage Technologies. Engage will manage OneMediaPlace's ad inventory and offer Engage's media services. OneMediaPlace will contribute anonymous user data to the Engage Knowledge database and use Engage's AdKnowledge for ad serving. Despite its close relationship with Engage, however, Mr. Machovina claims it is not an exclusive relationship and there are no plans at this time to have CMGI acquire the company and place it under the Engage umbrella. "The success of this will depend on our being non-partisan and ecumenical. Whether we are providing tools for sellers or agencies, we will not have exclusivities; we want to be Switzerland,'' Mr. Machovina said, using a metaphor Internet portal Yahoo! often uses to describe its relationship with content providers. OneMediaPlace goes up against such players as AdExchange.com, AdOutlet.com, BuyMedia and Media Market Makers.

Copyright April 2000, Crain Communications Inc.