• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 14, 2008

In another blow to MSN's sales efforts, chief media officer Joanne Bradford has opted to leave the company for advertising startup Spot Runner.

Bradford's move comes on the heels of Steve Berkowitz's departure last month, as well as Microsoft's controversial bid to acquire Yahoo for $40 billion.

Greg Nelson, until now general manager of MSN's international operations, has been tapped as the interim head of MSN worldwide.

Bradford is expected to leave MSN by March 19, and to begin soon after as Spot Runner's executive vice president of national marketing services.

Los Angeles-based Spot Runner has focused mainly on TV advertising, and has been trying to develop online print advertising and media-buying systems for newspapers and magazines. Chairman/CEO Nick Grouf recently claimed that the firm grew "500%" last year.

Just this month, Spot Runner announced the acquisition of Weblistic--an online media company specializing in search and display advertising. The move was intended to better position Spot Runner as a fully automated Web ad and media buying system to create, buy, schedule and evaluate ads across any medium.

Berkowitz, senior vice president of Microsoft's online business group, is expected to stay on through August to help with the transition. His duties are being distributed among three employees: Satya Nadella, currently in charge of search and search advertising engineering; Bill Veghte, a Windows marketing executive; and Brian McAndrews, formerly the chief executive of online advertising group aQuantive, which Microsoft acquired last year.

Also last month, the top executive in Microsoft's mobile phone software business, Pieter Knook, announced plans to leave. He will lead a new division of cellular operator Vodafone Group PLC. Andy Lees, formerly of Microsoft's server and tools division, was promoted to replace Knook.