• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 9, 2011

Clearly up for a challenge, Jim Norton has agreed to head up ad sales at AOL. Effective immediately, Norton will be responsible for sales across all of AOL’s owned and operated properties, including AOL.com, The Huffington Post, Engadget, Stylelist and MapQuest.

In addition, Norton will lead sales across all cross-platform channels, including the display-centric “Project Devil” initiative, video, and mobile.

To call his new job challenging is "very fair to say," Norton said Friday. “We feel very confident going into 2012." Turning around a series of disappointing quarters, AOL recently reported an 8% jump in third-quarter ad sales, which it attributed to a dual strategy of third-party network sales and enhanced premium display ad sales related to Project Devil.

While the ad revenue surge came amid a third-quarter earnings release showing a 6% decline in AOL’s total revenues, the drop was mostly attributed to non-advertising sales-related areas, and its Web access subscriptions business in particular.

Putting the turnaround in the context of AOL’s disastrous marriage to (and divorce from) Time Warner, Norton said: “We’ve done a lot of work with back-end legacy systems. It’s no secret that when you come out of a merger, there might be certain legacy systems that might not be best for everyone.”

Norton joined AOL in 2009, and has served in several positions, including SVP of AOL advertising’s advance sales team, which focuses on national and regional advertisers across all categories, as well as new business. Still trying to find the right management mix, AOL recently hired Janet Balis as head of sales strategy, marketing and partnerships for AOL advertising.

These appointments come at a tough time for AOL, as it struggles with a difficult ad market, new threats from Facebook and Google, and senior level departures. Brad Garlinghouse, president of AOL’s applications and commerce group and head of its Silicon Valley operations, confirmed reports he was leaving the company last month. Putting added pressure on AOL, home-page display ad trends remained "sluggish" through the first half of the third quarter, according to a recent report from Macquarie Securities.

Another source of controversy at AOL has been its ambitious local content and advertising strategy. “Local is an offering that’s very prominent for us,” said Norton. A key part of AOL’s local strategy, Patch is presently spending about $160 million a year on the local media network, which equates to about $150,000 to run each individual Patch site annually, according to analysts. Is it worth it?

Well, based on research for a forthcoming report, eMarketer analyst Lauren Fisher is cautiously optimistic about AOL’s local ad strategy. “They are gaining momentum with local advertisers,” Fisher said. “The size is there, and from a consumer and advertiser standpoint, having that sort of hyper-relevant content is beneficial.”

As a result, as of October, traffic to Patch.com had grown 493% year-over-year, according to comScore. Regarding AOL’s local investment, Fisher added: “When you’re launching any new product, you have to be prepared to spend a lot of capital.” More broadly, Fisher said she can see AOL aligning its national and local ad strategies. “It would fit AOL nicely to marry some of that national opportunity with local, as well.”

More recently, AOL entered into a partnership with rivals Yahoo and Microsoft to share unsold “premium” display inventory among their respective ad networks. Upon news of the deal last month, Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo EVP of the Americas, said: “This is about differentiation.” The comment was in response to a direct question about increasing competition from Google and Facebook, and whether their rise brought Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft together.

The deal is more the purview of Ned Brody, AOL's chief revenue officer, to whom Norton reports. In fact, Norton said on Friday that he was partly promoted so Brody could focus more on other similar deals going forward. During his time at AOL, Norton was also vice president of product sales, working with AOL product teams, including MapQuest, Patch, AOL Mail, AOL Video and Mobile.

In addition, Norton managed AOL’s search and sponsored listings business, and helped launch and manage AOL’s self service advertising platform, Ad Desk. Before joining AOL, Norton spent three years at Google, where he finally served as national sales manager for Google’s agency activation team.