AOL announced May 23 that Ned Brody had been named CEO of Advertising.com, a position that was created for him, said AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong in a statement.
In the new role, Brody’s responsibilities will include overseeing the company’s mobile, video and display products. He will also be tasked with growing AOL into new geographic locations over the next year, Brody said. “It’s to manage the product pipelines, marketing and financials,” he said. “It’s soup to nuts.”
The change comes after Armstrong announced during his Q1 earnings call that AOL would be taking a more segmented approach to its operations and their management. The brass tacks of how this will be accomplished has yet to be determined, Brody said.
“It was a growing realization that we could better focus our business by using individual leaders. Not that business wasn’t good — it can always be better,” Brody said. “We kept the same management team, we just focused them into verticals instead of the horizontal.”
Advertising.com is AOL’s fastest growing business, Brody said.
Prior to his promotion, Brody was chief revenue officer and president of AOL Advertising. In that role, he provided oversight for the AOL Advertising sales force, as well as for AOL’s Advertising.com Group.
As CEO of Advertising.com, Brody will continue to report directly to Armstrong. More than 1,000 people will report to Brody in his new role.
As part of the same announcement, the company named Jim Norton, SVP of AOL Advertising, to the company’s executive committee. Norton was named to his current position in December.
