IntegraClick gets new counsel

SARASOTA — IntegraClick, a fast growing but sometimes controversial Internet marketing firm, has hired a new lead attorney.

The firm's general counsel is James Epstein, according to a release. Epstein has more than a decade of experience on the legal side of online marketing, the firm says. He most recently ran operations and legal affairs for Reachsmart Interactive, an online advertising business. He also previously ran legal affairs at eDiets.com, a publicly traded company.

IntegraClick, through its Sarasota-based subsidiary, Clickbooth, reported $120 million in sales in 2009, the last year it publicly disclosed revenues. The firm's original niche was selling click-per-action Internet advertising, where clients only pay for an ad when an action, say a purchase, is taken. The traditional Internet advertising model is to pay-per-click. Technology entrepreneur John Lemp co-founded IntegraClick in 2004.

“I could not be more excited to join the IntegraClick team which, through the Clickbooth brand, has achieved unrivaled growth in the affiliate marketing space and is well known as a leader in compliance and best practices,” Epstein says in a release.

But the company's compliance issues have come into question by a host of former employees. One employee, the former head of technology, accused Lemp of ordering senior executives to “delete incriminating data, emails and instant messages” that could become evidence in a federal investigation into Internet marketing practices. Lemp denied the charges, in court and in an interview with the Business Review, and a March lawsuit on the matter was settled earlier this year.

The lawsuit, moreover, came two months after several executives resigned from IntegraClick, including co-founder Amanda Huntington, compliance and enforcement director Ziare Brown and general counsel Eric Grindley. Current IntegraClick executives say the resignations weren't connected to any alleged compliance issues, but part of the natural progression of the company.