• John Battelle's Searchblog, Tuesday, March 18, 2008 11:45 AM

In the past year, Yahoo, MSN and AOL have each lost or let go of the person in charge of revenue at their company. Yahoo Chief Sales Officer Wenda Harrris Millard either walked or was pushed out of the struggling Web giant last year, while Curt Viebranz, AOL's Platform A czar, was dumped after just six months. And finally, MSN's Joanne Bradford left Microsoft last week in order to work at a startup.

Why prompted their departure? A failure to answer the following questions: "How do we truly create value in the media business?" Do we sell inventory to the highest bidder via algorithms, automated processes? Do we partner with marketers and content creators to build brands? Those who left AOL, Yahoo and MSN were all "brand people," but their companies, through the acquisition of ad networks and marketing services firms last year, shifted their focus from brand building to advertising services. For these Web companies, the future isn't about content; it's about monetizing other people's content.

Indeed, the Google-chasers find themselves in that situation because Google has owned and operated the biggest, most efficient ad network of them all, AdSense, which will only get bigger, badder and more efficient now that Google has DoubleClick, too.

Read the whole story at John Battelle's Searchblog »