• The Wall Street Journal, Monday, March 16, 2009 11:45 AM

The departure of Tim Armstrong for AOL presents new challenges for Google, The Wall Street Journal reports, especially as the search giant tries to win new business from big brand advertisers. Armstrong, the former SVP of advertising sales, had a reputation for building strong relationships with big clients, who now have the option of buying graphical and video ads across Google's properties and even on TV shows where Google acts as an advertising broker. Of course, these new businesses represent just a tiny fraction of Google's revenues, and some, like Group M Interaction CEO Rob Norman, think they will struggle to grow without Armstrong, who forged a great working relationship with the company's big clients.

In response to last week's announcement from Time Warner that Armstrong would join AOL as its new chairman and CEO, Google said it would turn to an existing Google exec to replace him. An announcement is expected in the next several weeks; according to insiders, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Google's president for Asia-Pacific and Latin America operations, heads that list.

Whoever the successor is will face the substantial task of trying to draw more business from large brand marketers at a time when their budgets are shrinking. Drawing more money from the largest advertisers is a continuing challenge for Google, which became the Web's largest company thanks to hundreds of thousands of small to midsize advertisers buying search engine advertising. Now that the company is expanding into areas that are less attractive to smaller advertisers, it must target larger marketers instead. The weak economic climate will make this a particularly difficult task for whoever assumes Armstrong's position.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »