• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 5, 2010

The Huffington Post on Tuesday announced four appointments to its senior ad sales team, beginning with Brian Kaminsky, who has been named VP, and director of sales operations.

Kaminsky, who will be based out of the news and blogging hub's New York City headquarters, most recently served as VP of Global Revenue Operations for Reuters Media, and previously as Eastern Director of Operations and Business Manager at Yahoo.

Philip Cara has been named VP of sales for HuffPo's East Coast division. Cara, who will also be based out of New York, most recently served as regional sales director for AOL Advertising. Prior to AOL, Cara spent 7 years at Yahoo as a sales and marketing director for its Consumer Direct division.

Andy Wiedlin, most recently VP of West Coast sales for MySpace, has been named VP of sales for HuffPo's West Coast division. Prior to MySpace, he spent 5 years at Yahoo, where he oversaw a sales team of more than 20 employees.

Peter Cherukuri, meanwhile, has been named VP and General Manager of HuffPost's Washington, DC office. There, Cherukuri -- who was most recently SVP and Publisher of Capitol Hill rag Roll Call -- will be expected to expand on HuffPost's roster of political and issues-based advertising.

"These appointments will greatly expand upon the capabilities and reach of our sales organization," said Greg Coleman, president and chief revenue officer of The Huffington Post.

Coleman himself only recently joined HuffPo, after serving just three months as president of AOL's Platform-A ad business.

Huffington Post claims roughly 23 million unique monthly visitors, while Nielsen puts the number at less than 10 million.

The site recently received its first batch of data from comScore's new measurement service, ComScore Direct, which pegged the site's unique audience at 17.7 million -- versus 7.9 million for comScore's existing panel-only method.

ComScore Direct employs "beaconing" -- which records every time there's a server call on a given Web page as opposed to the standard comScore audience measurement service, which is panel-based, relying on a relatively small group of volunteers willing to have their Internet usage recorded.