Yahoo announced today that it was restructuring its advertising sales force, after being without a head of its key U.S. unit since mid-March.

Big news: No new top ad sales exec.

Instead, several North American sales execs with larger portfolios will report directly to Hilary Schneider, who is in charge of the Americas for Yahoo (YHOO).

“This elevates the strong talent and brings a broader set of voices one step higher in the organization,” said Schneider in an interview today. “The marketplace is changing rapidly and bringing complete solutions is really the mantra of where the market is going.”

This move is a shift from the direction Yahoo had been heading in since Joanne Bradford stepped down as head of U.S. revenue and market development for Yahoo in mid-March.

Schneider had been leading the search for an external replacement for Bradford, using star headhunter Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart.

The company apparently was unable to land the kind of prominent name Yahoo had been seeking for the job, after trying to attract several well-known candidates and rejecting others.

“Our leadership in sales is the strongest to date,” said Schneider, explaining the new structure for its ad sales force. “I have kissed a lot of frogs over the years, but it turned out the Prince Charmings we always needed were back at the ranch.”

(Frogs? Prince Charmings? On a ranch? Block that metaphor, although BoomTown will go along anyway!)

“Each of our leaders has strong relationships with advertisers and they know and trust each other,” said Schneider. “I will be consolidating the operational hub and directly managing it this time.”

Among the changes:

Mitch Spolan, the 11-year Yahoo veteran who is in charge of North American field sales, will also pick up responsibility for agency development and relationships.

Seth Dallaire, who has been running mid-market sales, will now be in charge of channel sales, reseller relationships and new and emerging formats, such as video, local, social and mobile.

Frank Weishaupt, who has been in charge of marketplaces, will add sales operations and training and sales development to his portfolio.

Lastly, Jim Stothard, who has been in charge of account management, will be leaving Yahoo for personal reasons, but will be working with Schneider to find his replacement.

Schneider said the new sales structure will eliminate a layer of management to better focus on improving advertising sales

That’s important, due to Yahoo’s recent quarterly earnings report, in which it posted flat revenue compared to last year, despite a recovery of the display advertising market.

Display is an area in which Yahoo (YHOO) has long dominated, although Google (GOOG) and others have stepped up competitive efforts aggressively.

So, the slowness in filling the company’s key sales position has had a lot of people inside Yahoo a little jumpy, because of the importance of firm leadership in the premium display online ad business in which the Internet giant needs to keep excelling.

Microsoft (MSFT) recently hired one of the people Yahoo had considered–former MTV Networks ad exec Carolyn Everson–for its head of sales.

With Everson and others not panning out, one hope was that Patrick Keane, CEO of Associated Content, which Yahoo just acquired, would take the job. But sources said he declined the offer.

Yahoo also had eyeballed internal candidates, but it seems to have decided to simply kiss, oops, elevate almost all of them.

Said Yahoo in its official statement about the changes:

“Yahoo! is committed to maintaining and strengthening partnerships with advertisers and agencies, and has a long history of sales leadership in the industry. The North American sales organization will now report directly to Hilary Schneider, EVP of the Americas. This organizational change will elevate the strong executive talent at Yahoo! and accelerate our momentum in the marketplace.”

It’s been almost four months since Joanne Bradford stepped down as head of U.S. revenue and market development for Yahoo and the company has yet to hire a new exec to fill the key job.

That’s got a lot of people inside Yahoo (YHOO) a little jumpy, according to numerous sources who have contacted me recently, because of the importance of firm leadership in the premium display online ad business in which the Internet giant needs to keep excelling.

U.S. head Hilary Schneider has been leading the search for a replacement for Bradford, using star headhunter Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart.

But she’s reportedly been unable to land the kind of prominent name Yahoo has been seeking for the job, after trying to attract several well-known candidates and rejecting others.

Microsoft (MSFT) recently hired an exec Yahoo had considered–former MTV Networks ad exec Carolyn Everson, who is likely to be announcing a new sales structure there soon–for its head of U.S. online ad sales.

With Everson and others not panning out, one hope was that Patrick Keane, CEO of Associated Content, which Yahoo just acquired, would take the job. But sources said he has thus far declined the offer.

And that’s why, sources said, Yahoo is back to eyeballing internal candidates again, especially 11-year Yahoo veteran Mitch Spolan, VP of North American field sales, and Mollie Spilman, Yahoo’s SVP of B2B marketing and also its packaging group.

Another Yahoo exec who had been in the running: Seth Dallaire, a former Microsoft exec whom Bradford brought to the company last fall as VP of mid-market sales, a newly-created role responsible for all mid-market sales efforts across search and display advertising.

We’ll see how it turns out, but as Yahoo just closed its second quarter, it will be important to get some clarity around its most important business in its most important market, especially as its stock continues its lackluster performance.

To help goose its shares, Yahoo announced a $3 billion stock buyback plan last week.

Earlier this week, Yahoo acquired social content start-up Associated Content for $90 million.

While founder Luke Beatty was prominently presented by Yahoo (YHOO) as the face of the deal, CEO Patrick Keane, pictured here, was oddly missing from most of the PR around the media-focused acquisition.

The reason, according to several sources at Yahoo: Yahoo’s top execs have not yet persuaded Keane to stay after the purchase is complete.

It’s not for lack of trying. Yahoo execs–such as CEO Carol Bartz and even co-founder Jerry Yang–have been trying to get Keane signed up, a move made more difficult since Keane got a big slug of cash in the payout of the deal.

One issue: What job would Keane get? One possibility among many is head of U.S. advertising sales, which was recently vacated by Joanne Bradford.

But sources close to the situation said Yahoo execs are also offering Keane the option of choosing his job.

That’s because he has substantially more consumer Internet experience than most of Bartz’s recent hires, many of whom have worked in the enterprise arena.

Bradford left abruptly in March for Associated Content competitor Demand Media, leaving her key job open. Yahoo hired Spencer Stuart’s Jim Citrin to conduct a search.

Keane certainly fits the sales bill, from his years as head of sales strategy at Google (GOOG) and CMO of the interactive unit of CBS (CBS).

Keane would clearly be a pick with more of a strategy bent than others whom Yahoo is aiming at, who are more plain-vanilla online ad sales execs.

CEO Tim Armstrong tells The Wall Street Journal about plans he has previously hinted about–“a new digital-newsroom system that uses a series of algorithms to predict the types of stories, videos and photos that will be most popular with consumers and marketers.”

The idea is that even a brain-dead editor knows that people want to read about Tiger Woods–and AOL’s coverage includes a 500-slide (!) slide show. But there are plenty of other stories that will go unassigned without a computer’s help. For example:

AOL says its new system determined that the most popular topic on the Web last Tuesday was “crib recalls,” following news of a massive recall by Stork Craft Manufacturing of Canada. AOL had only one story on its sites on the recall. But, if the new system had been live, editors would have geared up to supply stories on the subject from a number of angles, the company says.

This is the flip side to AOL’s hiring binge of the past year, where it scooped up a small army of veteran writers and editors. And it has a certain logic to it. Why wouldn’t a publisher want to publish things that readers want to read and advertisers want to sponsor?

Of course, this also creeps the heck out of people with traditional notions of journalism, or even “content production.” Including some of those recent hires. The company has been trying to soothe employees’ fears, but given that AOL is letting lots of people go, you’re not going to hear many writers and editors carping about this openly.

Investors who are going to own AOL after it spins off from Time Warner (TWX) next month are supposed to be cheered by the plan. It has a hint of Google (GOOG) to it, which makes sense given Armstrong’s long tenure there. And it sounds very similar to Demand Media, the much buzzed about content-creation factory.

AOL’s plan also sounds very similar to Associated Content, a search-driven content mill run by Armstrong’s former co-worker, Patrick Keane. Armstrong also happens to be an investor in the site, which raised a $6 million B round last spring that valued the company at $43 million. And earlier this year, AOL explored a purchase, sources say.

But while Armstrong ended up buying Patch Media, another start-up where he was an investor, he never pulled the trigger on Associated Content. Question: Does his new platform make a future deal more or less likely?

Mr. Keane, 38, was most recently chief marketing officer of CBS Corp.’s (CBS) CBS Interactive, a role he had been transitioning out of since earlier this year. Prior to that, he was a sales-strategy executive at Google Inc. (GOOG) who spearheaded the company’s planning with large advertisers and agencies.

His appointment signals some fresh momentum for the three-year-old Associated Content, which is one of several, including Demand Media and Howcast, that is trying to develop cheaper models for creating and distributing content online.

The company allows users to submit text, video and audio on topics it selects. The submissions tend towards how-to’s and subjects like whether to buy a hybrid car or how to get the best financial advice. The company indexes and distributes the media to other publishers and funnels traffic to it by optimizing it for search engines. It shows ads against the media and gives users and publishers a cut.

In an interview, Mr. Keane said the company’s math-based model appealed to him. “I really do believe that same math and science that has been applied to advertising can be applied to content,” he said. He added that after his stint at CBS, which included the company’s acquisition and integration of CNet, he was looking to get closer to the operations of a business.

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Here’s one: Patrick Keane, the former Google exec hired as executive vice president and chief marketing officer in February 2007, is out. In his place is Mickey Wilson, who was SVP of marketing at CNET.

CBS execs wouldn’t come out and say that Wilson has replaced Keane, and it’s not clear whether Keane is still a CBS employee or not. Keane’s LinkedIn profile still says he works at CBS, while his office voice mail says that he has “limited access to voice mail.” But it’s a matter of semantics–CBS employees say that Keane hasn’t been working there for weeks. Keane couldn’t be reached for comment.

Keane’s departure has been quiet, but prior to that he held a high-profile position at CBS: His Google (GOOG) pedigree helped boss Quincy Smith convince people that the network was serious about a digital strategy, and he frequently represented the company at conferences and the like.