• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, February 18, 2010

Centralizing its display ad sales efforts, Google on Thursday tapped DoubleClick veteran Barry Salzman to oversee all display-advertising businesses in the Americas. The newly created position gives Salzman reign over YouTube, the Google Content Network, DoubleClick's ad-serving business, and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Reporting directly to Henrique de Castro, Google's VP of global media and platforms, Salzman will be expected to consolidate the search giant's display ad sales teams in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. As VP of product management at Google, Neal Mohan will continue to be directly responsible for display products.

Continuing to flesh out its display ad services, Google introduced its highly anticipated ad exchange in late September, which, like a stock market, lets advertisers and publishers buy and sell ad space.

Stunting its display-related efforts, Google has lost several key executives over the past year. In September, Michael Rubenstein, who joined Google when it acquired DoubleClick in 2008, left the company to pursue an unspecified opportunity. Rubenstein's departure followed former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt's exit from the company at the end of April.

Rosenblatt, president of Google's global display advertising business, was the third major executive to leave the company in early 2009, after Tim Armstrong, former head of Americas sales, left to become AOL's CEO, and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, former president of Google's Asia Pacific and Latin America operations, left to join a venture capital firm.

Between 1997 and 2002, Salzman was president of DoubleClick International, and later served as head of DoubleClick's global media businesses.

More recently, Salzman served as CEO of digital media platform provider YDC, and chief operating officer for comparison shopping site ShopWiki.