• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, May 5, 2011

LinkedIn is making a number of staffing changes in its advertising business as it prepares for an IPO, according to a memo circulated within the company Thursday.

Among the moves is Steve Patrizi. He has led U.S. sales for LinkedIn for the last three-and-a-half years, and is leaving the professional social-networking site to become chief revenue officer at Bunchball, which designs custom online games for publishers including Hearst, USA Network and Comcast.

Effectively replacing Patrizi is Jonathan Lister, promoted to vice president, North America, for marketing solutions, after serving as country manager in Canada, and managing director for Canada and Latin America. He reports to Clive Punter, who will continue to serve as global managing director for the marketing solutions group.

Joining the company in the new position of director of global agency relations is Emily Ketchen, previously senior vice president and group account director at McCann Worldgroup in San Francisco. In the new post, she will be responsible for relationships with all major advertising and marketing agencies worldwide.

Among other new hires, Joshua Graff recently joined LinkedIn as sales director for EMEA, and Alison Engel, previously marketing director at Microsoft, has been named director of field marketing. (She is currently on maternity leave.)

According to the memo from Mike Gamson, senior vice president, global sales at LinkedIn, the company's ad revenue has nearly doubled in the first quarter to $27.7 million. That amount made up more than one- quarter of the $93.9 million in total first-quarter sales the company reported in its updated IPO filing Wednesday.

LinkedIn posted a profit of $15.4 million on revenue of $243 million last year. Its first-quarter profit was $2 million.

"With the wind clearly at our backs, we believe that now is the right time to take our Marketing Solutions business to the next level," he wrote. "We're going to do this by placing even more emphasis on better meeting the marketing and advertising goals of the world's leading and largest B-to-B and 'prosumer' brands."

In addition to advertising, LinkedIn generates the balance of its revenue from premium subscriptions. Special features and a "hiring solutions" business allow companies to recruit job candidates via the site. Gamson noted that LinkedIn now has 33,000 advertisers and a worldwide audience of 100 million professionals, including 9 million C-level officers and 7 million small-business owners.

The company filed to go public, but has not said how many shares it wants to sell in an IPO, or at what price. The Wall Street Journal has previously reported it plans to raise $200 million, expected to value the company at about $2 billion.

The ad sales management changes are expected to be announced Friday.