As someone who’s been a “quant” both in the Wall Street sense and in advertising, I admit there are parallels between Wall Street and Madison Avenue today, and advertisers should carefully consider how real-time bidding will impact their industry. But just because mathematical minds are invading the ad-trading industry doesn’t mean they’ll bring it down the same way Wall Street quants did.

My personal story as a Wall Street quant-turned-advertising exec sheds some light on the differences between Wall Street and Madison Avenue. My life as a quant started in the early 90s. I was working on my PhD in Artificial Intelligence at Stanford and NASA, focusing on building the brains for autonomous, self-driving robots. Whenever I’d speculate on how my research would be useful in the real world, I’d think, “Well, someday we’ll send an autonomous robot to Mars.” Toiling in my lab for a pittance, I began to realize that applying my mathematical modeling skills to Wall Street might be more tangible — and lucrative — than dreaming about putting a robot on Mars. So in 1996 I became a Wall Street consultant — or, more colloquially, a quant. I passed on my mathematical knowledge to hedge fund financiers and traders so they could make more money.

Around the same time, I also consulted with packaged foods companies, helping them apply predictive data models to target the customers with mayonnaise and cereal coupons. In those days, the people applying quantitative approaches to advertising were most often called database marketers. They “mined” historical data on their customers and used it to target marketing campaigns, typically through direct mail and then as the years went by, through email and on their websites, and finally via paid search and banner ads.

Today, of course, marketers have adopted sophisticated, real-time bidding platforms to buy highly targeted “audiences” – buying display and video ads on the fly to reach in-market consumers right when they’re researching products or are ready to make a purchase. Enter the “real-time bidding” platforms for online ads that quants are supposedly hovering around, trying to find ways to “take wealth” from the trades.

Advertisers love real-time bidding because it turns display advertising into a precision science and a real-time market – cutting costs, improving campaign performance, and improving ad targeting. This is similar to how Wall Street trading works, but I don’t think quants will descend on real-time bidding platforms and try to sink the system for pure financial gain. Why? As I mentioned above, that’s just not possible from a technical standpoint. On a real-time exchange, as a user visits a page, an amazing technological triumph is happening behind the scenes. Your browser gets the page from the website’s server. Part of the page says “oh, you have to ask Google’s ADX exchange for an ad.” So your browser asks ADX for an ad. Then in real-time, ADX pokes a number of advertising companies’ servers to say “hey, right now I have this one little rectangle on this page for sale – how much would you bid on it?” As the servers evaluate whether to put an ad on this page, they can leverage information about the page, the user (anonymously), and other factors about the rectangle.

This is similar to the way a quantitative trading system might evaluate a real-time offer on NASDAQ to buy or sell a stock on a financial exchange, based on the stock’s p/e ratio, institutional holdings, and so forth. After ages pass from the computer’s perspective and the blink of an eye to us, the advertising company’s servers shoot back a bid to Google, saying “OK I want to pay $0.002472 for this rectangle and I want to show a peanut butter ad.” In the same way that NASDAQ clears trades, the ad exchange figures out the highest bidder and serves that bidder’s ad back to the person on the other end of the browser. Despite real-time “trading” of ads, there is no risk of quants turning online advertising into a shady money-making game. The opportunity to serve an ad (a single “impression” in ad speak) is conjured into existence when a person visits a Web page, and it is consumed the instant this person is matched with the right ad. There is no cigar-smoking man buying an impression at a low price and dumping it next week at a higher price on some unsuspecting naive buyer, simply because impressions just don’t live that long.

George John is CEO of Rocket Fuel Incorporated, a digital advertising company that delivers innovative and insanely effective online campaigns for large and growing brands.

Microsoft–furious over a recent talent grab of its top advertising exec by Facebook–has been considering a wide range of options, including legal action to block the move, according to sources close to the situation.

Lawyer at both companies have been in back-and-forth talks in recent days after the hiring of Microsoft’s global ad sales head Carolyn Everson by the Silicon Valley social networking powerhouse to be its VP of global sales.

Among the more likely solutions being discussed: Barring Everson–a longtime ad sales exec who came to Microsoft from MTV Networks–from using any strategic information she learned at the company and also from contacting certain ad clients on behalf of Facebook for a certain period of time.

While a legal action to stop her from actually taking the position is the most serious option, it is certainly not without precedent for Microsoft. The company recently got a temporary restraining order to block one of its top government relations execs, Matt Miszewski, from working at Salesforce.com, pointing to non-compete and confidentiality contracts.

Whatever happens, it is clear the Everson hiring has infuriated Microsoft execs, especially CEO Steve Ballmer, since the company regards Facebook as a close partner. Microsoft is also a longtime investor in Facebook.

While considering a temporary restraining order against Everson in this kind of situation–since it is essentially the same job–is standard operating procedure for any company, several sources said tensions are higher than usual.

“This is just tone deaf on Facebook’s part not to think this would not be a problem,” said one person.

One particularly irksome aspect–top Facebook execs did not call Ballmer before news of the appointment leaked out to assuage the situation.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg did release a statement when BoomTown broke news of the move in mid-February, in an attempt to make nice.

“Microsoft was one of our earliest partners and is still one of our most valued,” she said, in part. “We look forward to continuing to expand our relationship with them.”

Her dulcet words have apparently not worked.

In fact, the talent raid came as a surprise to many at Microsoft, especially since Everson (pictured here) had been hired in June after a long search and had become a high-profile presence at internal and external Microsoft events.

That included organizing the splashy “Imagine 2011, Microsoft Advertising’s Marketing Leadership Summit.” The event is set to take place at the end of March at the software giant’s Redmond, Wa. HQ and will include an evening concert by the band Train.

Now she will be doing such things for Facebook, where Everson will be replacing longtime and well-regarded ad exec Mike Murphy, who left the Palo Alto, Calif., company last fall. She will report to former Googler David Fischer, VP of Advertising and Global Operations.

Having a top exec who is amenable to and well known by Madison Avenue is key for Facebook as it ramps up its business, in anticipation of an IPO next year.

Despite being private, Facebook has recently been valued at between $50 and $60 billion by investors, who have been eagerly buying up shares of the company on secondary markets.

Under Murphy and Fischer, ad sales have been doing well already. Facebook’s share of online display advertising has more than quadrupled, from about three percent to almost 14 percent of the nearly $9 billion U.S. market, according to a recent survey.

In growing so quickly, Facebook has grabbed ad revenue–reportedly $2 billion last year–from old online powerhouses, especially Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL, and is also in a big fight with Google over premium ad sales.

Facebook’s surging usage and engagement are the reasons for the increased interest from advertisers, as well as its global growth in both market share and mindshare of consumers.

The opportunity at Facebook is clearly a big–and probably irresistible–move for the dynamic Everson, who has mostly worked in the mainstream media for much of her career.

Still, while movement of execs among top tech companies is not uncommon, there has been a lot less from Microsoft to Facebook.

Instead, Facebook has been most aggressive in its efforts to attract talent from Google.

No longer. In fact, the week before Facebook grabbed Everson, it also hired an up-and-coming exec, Chris Daniels, GM of Bing Mobile Product Management, to be its director of business development.

Still, there is some hiring war history between the companies. In late 2008, Microsoft’s Ballmer managed to lure former Yahoo exec Qi Lu to run its Online Services Division, several sources at both companies said, after he had told Facebook he would work there as its engineering lead. Lu had also been heavily recruited by Google.

Eventually, that was water under the bridge, which is what Facebook is hoping will happen with Microsoft over Everson.

Also important in the weighing of options at Microsoft is the obvious importance of keeping up good relations with Facebook. It is an important partnership, especially for its Bing search business, as an advantage over Google.

“Everyone is hoping to resolve this amicably,” said one person close to the situation. “There has been some damage to the relationship for sure, but the question is whether Microsoft wants to do something that would escalate that damage.”

Not surprisingly, both Facebook and Microsoft declined to comment on the fracas.

Apparently, it’s not only in Google’s pond where Facebook fishes for talent–the social networking giant has recruited Microsoft’s global advertising head Carolyn Everson as one of its top sales execs.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the hiring, after a query this afternoon by BoomTown. Everson will be VP of Global Sales at the Silicon Valley company, although is likely to be located in New York.

The move will surely cause some tensions with the software giant, which is both a prominent partner of and investor in Facebook, especially since Everson was only hired at Microsoft last June after a long search.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg addressed that issue in a statement:

“Microsoft was one of our earliest partners and is still one of our most valued. We have a long and strong relationship that includes search ads on our site, a social layer on Bing search results and a deep and popular integration with Xbox. They are a leader when it comes to unlocking the power of social for their already popular products and services. We look forward to continuing to expand our relationship with them.”

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

Despite the possible awkwardness between Facebook and Microsoft–hey, we stole your top sales exec, but you rock!–the move to Facebook is a big opportunity for Everson.

But, according to sources, the former MTV Networks ad exec had become frustrated by the intense focus on pushing traffic to Microsoft’s Bing search service from its MSN portal at the expense of premium ad sales.

In addition, with the massive search and advertising partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo now in place, Everson was also not able to offer search advertising from Microsoft to marketers in packages. Yahoo is now in charge of that offering.

Everson will essentially be replacing longtime and well-regarded Facebook ad exec Mike Murphy, who left the Palo Alto, Calif., company last fall. She will report to former Googler David Fischer, VP of Advertising and Global Operations.

But it was COO Sheryl Sandberg, said sources, who was most focused on Everson. In fact, she just “friended” Everson on Facebook this week, as did another top ad exec, Tom Arrix.

Having a top exec who is amenable to and well known by Madison Avenue is key for Facebook as it ramps up its business, in anticipation of an IPO next year.

Despite being private, Facebook has recently been valued at between $50 and $60 billion by investors, who have been eagerly buying up shares of the company on secondary markets.

Under Murphy and Fischer, ad sales have been doing well already. Facebook’s share of online display advertising has more than quadrupled, from about three percent to almost 14 percent of the nearly $9 billion U.S. market, according to a recent survey.

In growing so quickly, Facebook has grabbed ad revenue–reportedly $2 billion last year–from old online powerhouses, especially Yahoo and AOL, and is also in a big fight with Google over premium ad sales.

Facebook’s surging usage and engagement are the reasons for the increased interest from advertisers, as well as its global growth in both market share and mindshare of consumers.

Thus, the search for a Murphy replacement was far-ranging, and included interest in a number of prominent ad execs from traditional media giants and also ad agencies.

The appointment is a big move for the dynamic Everson, who has mostly worked in the mainstream media for much of her career.

Everson came to Microsoft from a job as EVP of Strategy and Operations for the MTV Networks U.S. ad sales department.

Interestingly, she was also on the short list of candidates Yahoo was once perusing to fill the key U.S. ad sales job after Joanne Bradford departed for Demand Media.

Under the deal, which is in the final stages of negotiations, iCrossing, one of the nation’s biggest independent digital-marketing shops, is likely to fetch about $375 million, plus bonus payments if it reaches certain targets, these people said.

Digital-marketing firms help companies pitch their products on the Internet, via cellphones and through other interactive channels. They have attracted particular interest from ad agencies and others as marketers shift more of their ad dollars from traditional media to the Web.

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The industry is finalizing an ad campaign to educate consumers about how digital advertising works, creating an icon that would appear on Web pages or ads alerting consumers if their activity is being tracked and deploying new technologies to police the Web for illegal activities. At issue is the practice of tracking consumers’ Web activities–from the searches they make to the sites they visit and the products they buy–for the purpose of targeting ads.

The efforts follow calls from the FTC earlier this year for Web advertisers and Internet companies to do a better job explaining how they track and use information about consumers’ Web activities and creating a simple way consumers can opt out of being tracked.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The artist, who calls his revved-up rockabilly sound “psychobilly,” earlier this year cooked up a scheme to put almost his entire catalog up on Amazon.com, for free. “I’m losing a little bit of money in the short run,” Mr. Nixon says. But “in the long run, there is going to be much bigger Mojo awareness.” He and his online distributor, The Orchard, hope the move will lead to bigger sales and other opportunities, such as licensing more of his songs to Hollywood and Madison Avenue.

Mr. Nixon, who was hoping to get just 10,000 or so downloads out of the scheme, says he is very happy with the outcome so far.

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The perennial, and obvious, solution is to incorporate ads into the service, but so far Twitter hasn’t tried it, except for very limited experiments.

The good news for Twitter and its investors is that the service’s user base is pretty receptive to advertising, in general terms, because it’s pretty receptive to just about everything on the Web.

So says research group Interpret LLC, which has a new study out today, conveniently enough. From the release:

Twitter users are twice as likely to review or rate products online (24% vs. 12%), visit company profiles (20% vs. 11%) and click on advertisements or sponsors (20% vs.9%) as those who only belong to traditional social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace. The data suggests that Twitter users uniquely demonstrate higher engagement with brands, not just with “tweets” they post.

These statistics are self-reported, and Interpret doesn’t say how big a sample its survey used, so take them with as much salt as you like. But they seem intuitively and directionally correct: Anyone willing to plug into the waves of information that Twitter pumps out is likely engaged all over the Web.

Note what the Interpret report doesn’t say: That Twitter users are eager to have ads inserted into the service itself.

Doesn’t matter. At some point, they’re unlikely to have a choice about that because it seems hard to imagine that Twitter can ever deliver on its investors’ sky-high expectations without generating some kind of money, somehow, from Madison avenue.

Which is exactly why Biz Stone and crew, who once made a point of expressing their derision for ads, now make a point of saying that ads may not be such a terrible thing, after all.

UPDATE: In an internal memo, MySpace is now telling employees that current ad sales head Jeff Berman is leaving the company.

In a move that will surely have Madison Avenue talking, well-known online advertising sales executive Wenda Harris Millard (pictured here)–who is now president of New York- and Los Angeles-based media consultancy Media Link–is poised to take over all advertising sales at MySpace, sources said.

But, in an unusual twist, she will remain in her job at Media Link, which has also been hired by MySpace to advise on restructuring the social networking company’s salesforce.

Sources said the arrangement is expected to be announced sometime today.

While details are still being hashed out, Millard–who was the top ad exec at Yahoo (YHOO) in its glory days and who recently left her job as co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO)–will apparently report to MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta directly.

In turn, all regional advertising vice presidents at MySpace will report to her. Millard is likely to work out of New York, where she lives and where the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace also has offices.

(You can see a video interview that BoomTown did with Millard a year ago below, when she was still at MSLO.)

This is a big coup for Media Link, which was founded by Michael Kassan, given that it will essentially be running a major part of the business of MySpace as MySpace seeks to reinvigorate itself, spur innovation and reset its product strategy.

Media Link hired Millard in April, which turned out to be a good move as she appeared to be the obvious draw for MySpace, as well as News Corp. (NWS) execs.

She is well known to them, as well as to many in both the Internet and advertising industries. Millard has been a longtime online exec, working at Ziff Davis Media and DoubleClick in the very early days of the Web. She was also chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau last year until this past April.

MySpace also reportedly talked to several big online advertising sales execs like Millard about the job, according to several sources outside the company.

This development now leaves the fate of President of Sales and Marketing Jeff Berman (pictured here) unclear.

But several sources told me Berman–whom I wrote earlier this summer was “rumored to be on the bubble,” but remaining for the time being–has been actively looking for a new job in the past few weeks and even told at least one person he spoke to that he was going to be “gone from MySpace by Labor Day.”

Probably sooner, now that MySpace is about to hire Millard and her firm to take over a big part of his job.

Yesterday, MySpace made another splashy move by buying the social music site, iLike, the first acquisition by its new exec team, as part of a move to push the “socialization of content.”

In a statement in the press release about the iLike acquisition, Van Natta might be seen as tipping his hand a little bit: “We are deeply committed to bringing world class talent into all areas of the company….”

Seasoned and experienced management was a point he also emphasized in a conference call with media yesterday about the iLike deal.

Millard is certainly that.

And, in fact, there has been a clearing out of almost all of MySpace’s former top execs and replacement with new blood–such as former Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) and Facebook alum Katie Geminder as SVP of user experience and design and Mike Macadaan, who is VP of product.

It is a process that is doubtlessly going to continue as Millard comes in and cleans house–and it will be interesting to see just what talent comes in next.

Here’s Millard in action in my video interview with her last July, in which she talks about advertising on social networking sites and lots of other stuff:

(Full disclosure: News Corp., owner of MySpace, also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090820/myspace-to-hire-millard-and-also-media-link-to-take-over-ad-sales-whither-berman/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090430/microsoft-on-the-hunt-for-a-new-head-of-worldwide-online-sales-even-as-yahoo-talks-continue/ http://allthingsd.com/20090430/microsoft-on-the-hunt-for-a-new-head-of-worldwide-online-sales-even-as-yahoo-talks-continue/#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:01:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=13023

Microsoft is searching for a major executive to run its world-wide online sales, said several sources close to the situation, even as talks with Yahoo about a deal to partner in its search and display advertising businesses continue.

“They need to find a way to make money in display,” said one source close to the situation. “Or, I guess, find a way to not lose quite so much.”

The software giant has been trying to build its online business for many years now, spending a lot of money and not getting very much traction.

In its recent quarterly results, in fact, Microsoft’s online services got hit badly, with a 14 percent decline in revenue from a year ago to $721 million. Losses doubled to $575 million.

Sources said Microsoft (MSFT)–which has hired headhunting firm Spencer Stuart to conduct the search–is looking for more execs to turbocharge the situation, with one criterion being that the person hired is “another ambassador to Madison Avenue.”

Last fall, it did that by hiring Time Inc. ad exec Robin Domeniconi to take over as the new VP, U.S., Microsoft Advertising.

That’s why the new sales candidate the company is looking for might only be for someone to lead Microsoft’s international ad sales, since the exec in charge of that business left in December as part of a mass of changes in the wake of the hiring of digital head Qi Lu.

Those changes included the departure of that exec, Global VP of Sales Bill Shaughnessy, as well as its top online ad sales exec, Brian McAndrews, and the rejiggering of its online sales unit.

In that switch, Microsoft said in a press release: “The field sales organizations in the Online Services Group will move to Microsoft’s centralized Sales, Marketing and Services Group led by chief operating officer Kevin Turner. This group, called Consumer & Online, will be led by Corporate Vice President Darren Huston and will include the Global Advertising Sales and Services organization, led by vice president Bill Shaughnessy.”

The move to centralize, according to sources, has been controversial within the company, since it means all sales are being lumped into one megagroup.

That could all change dramatically again if there is any success in the talks Microsoft has been having with Yahoo (YHOO) about outsourcing its online display sales to the Internet giant. The pair have been discussing partnering over search and advertising.

While such a deal might not happen–Yahoo has been especially reticent to separate its search and display businesses–the two sides have been discussing several scenarios in a bid to compete with online giant Google (GOOG).

Among the latest ideas is one in which Yahoo would take over both search and display advertising sales and Microsoft would run the tech behind the scenes.

Such a deal would be a major shift for both companies in their business focus and would also tether them together.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090430/microsoft-on-the-hunt-for-a-new-head-of-worldwide-online-sales-even-as-yahoo-talks-continue/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20081111/facebook-the-what-chu-talkin-bout-willis-ad-conundrum/ http://allthingsd.com/20081111/facebook-the-what-chu-talkin-bout-willis-ad-conundrum/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:58:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=6349

The one truly interesting factoid in The Wall Street Journal’s piece about the efficacy (or lack thereof) of Facebook’s engagement ads today was this one about its results in the graphical ad business versus rival MySpace:

The company says 70 of the U.S.’s 100 largest advertisers have advertised on its site since 2007. But its share of total number of U.S. online display ad views was just 1.1 percent, according to market research firm comScore Inc., in its most recent report in June.

News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media Unit, which includes rival MySpace.com, is the market leader with 15.9 percent of display-ad spending, according to comScore.”

This is what is known in the BoomTown lexicon as a classic What-chu-talkin-bout-Willis? moment.

That’s an especially astonishing number, because MySpace has been steadily losing audience leadership and, more importantly, the growth race to Facebook over the last year (see the Journal graph here).

Nonetheless, MySpace, the unit of News Corp. (NWS) that makes up much of FIM, seems to be making up for it in actually selling the ads needed to make social networking profitable.

And, while Facebook has been beefing up its ad sales force on Madison Avenue–it turns out that it is a media company, after all, and not a utility!–so has MySpace, mostly from ex-employees of Yahoo (YHOO), which still dominates the category, despite its numerous missteps.

Both Facebook and MySpace will, as will everyone in the graphical ad space, get hit hard by the econalypse in the advertising space online, of course.

But, given these stats, Facebook clearly has to start seriously upping its ad performance to at least match MySpace.

(This site, as well as The Wall Street Journal, are also owned by News Corp.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081111/facebook-the-what-chu-talkin-bout-willis-ad-conundrum/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20081002/yahoo-drops-to-1558-a-share-but-microsoft-still-uninterested/ http://allthingsd.com/20081002/yahoo-drops-to-1558-a-share-but-microsoft-still-uninterested/#comments Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:13:18 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=4765

To be fair, the whole market was dragged down today due to worries about a deepening recession. But Yahoo’s ever-decreasing share price has got to have the company and its investors mighty worried.

Hitting lows not seen since the dot-com doldrums of 2001 and 2002, Yahoo closed at $15.58–down $1.38 or 8.14 percent–giving the troubled Internet giant a market cap of just $22.08 billion.

That is almost exactly half of what Yahoo leadership could have gotten if the company had accepted a takeover offer made by Microsoft at the beginning of February.

Nonetheless, even at these bargain-basement prices, sources at the software giant said that Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer has declared repeatedly at internal gatherings recently that he is not going to make another offer for Yahoo (YHOO) no matter how low it goes.

This seems a little stubborn to BoomTown–a kind of taking-my-marbles-and-going-home attitude–especially given Yahoo still has one of the most highly trafficked sites on the Web and some of its best-known products and services, as well as being the No. 2 player in search.

And Ballmer might well be bluffing, of course. After all, a bargain is a bargain.

Nonetheless, it underscores the reality that Yahoo is probably truly on its own now and must sink or swim on the initiatives and leadership of CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker.

As I have written repeatedly, the pair has increasingly less time to act and must show perceptible improvements in results.

As at most Web companies, most analysts agree the third quarter is probably not a disaster for Yahoo. Instead, all eyes are on the fourth quarter, which is going to be most definitely impacted by the current economic slowdown.

Yahoo has recently hired a former Microsoft exec–Joanne Bradford–to lead its advertising efforts in the key U.S. market. And, while she is well regarded on Madison Avenue, Bradford has her work cut out of her, especially in the hard-hit online display advertising business.

Yahoo also is on pins and needles to see if the Justice Department will try to put the kibosh on its search ad outsourcing deal with Google (GOOG).

Yahoo is hoping to get a big boost in revenue from the partnership, which has many critics. In the current economic environment, the government might be loath to slap down any sign of financial activity, but the uncertainty is not good for Yahoo.

Yahoo’s declining stock price is also sure to impact its talks with Time Warner (TWX) over acquiring its AOL unit. Yahoo does not want to pay anywhere near the $10 billion that the media giant had previously floated as its price for the once-mighty, now-beleaguered AOL.

But Yahoo’s declining market value means it is likely to be able to pony up less and less.

With continuing rumors of layoffs, which I posted about two weeks ago, doing more with less is going to be business as usual at Yahoo, it seems.

And, in fact, heads of various business units at Yahoo have been given marching orders to cut costs, which are quite substantial.

“We might not make all the cuts requested,” said one exec. “But it is going to hurt.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081002/yahoo-drops-to-1558-a-share-but-microsoft-still-uninterested/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080909/yahoo-brings-in-drum-roll-please-a-former-microsoft-exec-to-head-ad-sales/ http://allthingsd.com/20080909/yahoo-brings-in-drum-roll-please-a-former-microsoft-exec-to-head-ad-sales/#comments Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:43:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=3509 In what is both a surprising and not-so-surprising move, Yahoo has replaced its top U.S. ad sales exec with one from Microsoft.

The departure of Dave Karnstedt, who took over last year when longtime Yahoo ad sales exec Wenda Millard left Yahoo in the first of many controversial partings, has been long rumored internally.

(In fact, I have driven one of Yahoo’s PR people crazy in recent months trying to verify a persistent tip I had been getting that he was headed out the door.)

Karnstedt will be joining Redpoint Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture firm, as an executive-in-residence.

And, in a rejiggering and addition of duties at Yahoo (YHOO), Karnstedt’s job and more is going to Joanne Bradford (pictured here), a longtime and well-known Microsoft (MSFT) exec who decamped from the software giant to helm national ad sales at trendy ad services start-up Spot Runner just six months ago.

There have been rumors swirling that Bradford was unhappy at the smaller company after working at the giant Microsoft.

She was EVP of National Marketing Services, focused on national advertisers, for Spot Runner, joining in a high-profile move in March. Previous to Spot Runner, Bradford was a VP and chief media officer of MSN Media Network, and had worked at BusinessWeek before that.

In any case, the move will be seen as a blow to Spot Runner, which recently did some unusual layoffs, despite receiving a large slug of cash from investors.

(Here is a post and video I did on a recent trip to Spot Runner, including an interview with its CEO Nick Grouf.)

“I am going back to my entrepreneurial, build-something roots,” Bradford told me at the time she joined Spot Runner. “There is such inefficiency in buying and selling of advertising and someone has to solve that, both for big companies and small ones.”

Well, welcome to Yahoo, Joanne, which could use a little efficiency in its buying and selling of ad sales!

Seriously, Bradford will now will take over as SVP of U.S. revenue and market development at Yahoo at a very dicey time.

Besides facing a withering U.S. economy, a weakened stock price after the takeover attempt by Microsoft and ensuing mess related to it, it was revealed that the Justice Department might block the deal Yahoo recently struck to outsource some of its ad sales to Google (GOOG).

Yahoo said that in this newly created role Bradford will oversee sales, market development for advertisers, small business and HotJobs. She will report to Hilary Schneider, EVP of Yahoo’s U.S unit.

Karnstedt, whom I interviewed when he first took over ad sales a little more than a year ago, is leaving to pursue other opportunities.

In Silicon Valley, that means the inevitable stop at a VC firm. Hence, Redpoint!

Interestingly, he joins former Ask.com head Jim Lanzone at Redpoint, while former Yahoo execs Jeff Weiner (Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital) and David Goldberg (Benchmark) also landed cushy EIR gigs after leaving Yahoo.

Karnstedt had been SVP of U.S. sales at Yahoo and had apparently resigned from the company earlier this summer (thanks for not confirming that when I asked so many times, Yahoo!)

With Yahoo seven years, he was charged with the difficult task of integrating Yahoo’s search, display, Blue Lithium and Right Media sales teams.

And while Karnstedt was well liked, many complained that the longtime online ad techie was not enough of a gregarious and schmoozy ad sales exec, with deep relationships on Madison Avenue, as Millard–and Bradford–surely are.

As I wrote in Aug. 2007, after an interview with him at Yahoo’s New York offices:

I made the point to Dave (he is the kind of guy you can call Dave, as you can see pictured here) that an ad guy needs to sell himself, but to no avail, so we press on in text. Nonetheless, let me set the visual scene:

Nicest guy you ever want to meet walks into nondescript room, wearing khaki-oxford-jacket Internet uniform 101. Declares Yahoo is going to kick some advertising butt in the nicest possible way. It is revealed this nice guy has been around the Web block for quite a while. Much chitter-chatter ensues. Cut to my clear-as-Fiji-water observation that nice guy, as nice as he is, has his work cut out for him.”

And now, more than ever in Yahoo’s key ad market, so does Bradford.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080909/yahoo-brings-in-drum-roll-please-a-former-microsoft-exec-to-head-ad-sales/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080604/sliding-into-the-big-apple/ http://allthingsd.com/20080604/sliding-into-the-big-apple/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:32:41 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080604/sliding-into-the-big-apple/

In its ongoing bid to prove there is a robust and sustainable advertising business in the social-networking space, widget-maker Slide opened a New York City office and hired a big-deal online ad exec.

Of course, because it has to be hip, the office is in the always trendy West Village, instead of uptown in Manhattan on Madison Avenue.

The new director of ad sales is Jason Bitensky, who comes to Slide from his post as director of national sales at AOL (TWX) Media Networks/Platform-A. Previous to that, he worked at Comcast (CMCSA).

Until this hire, Slide had only four salespeople, all located at its San Francisco HQ, who sold campaigns and sponsorships for its third-party apps that are hugely popular on sites like Facebook and MySpace (NWS).

Advertisers are most definitely intrigued, experimenting all over the place and interested in different ways of engaging with consumers.

Nonetheless, they are still using tiny “innovation” budgets to test the space and have still not unlocked the treasure chests of big bucks that go to television.

In fact, here is an interesting story on the ad issues apps-makers face in The Wall Street Journal tomorrow.

The not-so-much-money quote: “The push by application companies means more players are competing over what is a relatively small pie. In 2007, U.S. marketers spent $600 million advertising on social media, a sliver of the $18 billion spent on interactive advertising that year, according to Forrester Research. The number is forecast to spike to $6.9 billion by 2012.”

Still, said Max Levchin, CEO of Slide, about the move in a statement: “The success of campaigns on our popular products, such as SuperPoke!, Top Friends and FunWall, has attracted the attention of not only top brands, but also top talent like Jason.”

BoomTown shall agree to disagree with our favorite widget king about SuperPoke’s potential as an ad vehicle.

But it is entirely true that Slide and other apps-makers have to convince big brands that the social-networking phenomenon is here to stay and is effective, well beyond its viral popularity and huge valuations given to companies in the space.

Earlier this year, Slide–founded in 2005–got a $50 million round of funding that valued the company at $550 million.

And here’s a disturbing, but very funny, spoof video about where all this SuperPoking eventually ends up: