• Advertising Age, Monday, September 8, 2008 11:30 AM

We've been hearing for some time from Microsoft that its future is Web advertising, yet the tech giant has failed to replace former digital advertising chief Kevin Johnson, who departed in July. Advertising Age takes a look at the logical replacement candidates, and handicaps their likelihood of succeeding Johnson.

At 2-1 odds, former aQuantive CEO Brian McAndrews seems like the logical frontrunner, having led the successful integration of aQuantive units Atlas and DrivePM with Microsoft's advertising system. However, as paidContent.org's David Kaplan points out, McAndrews is now a very rich man following aQuantive's $5.9 billion purchase by Microsoft, so he may not be too keen on working for someone like Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

After McAndrews, Ad Age says longtime veteran Yusuf Mehdi would be next in line to Microsoft's advertising throne. He's given 3-1 odds of succeeding Johnson, but Kaplan argues that he might be perceived as "too entrenched in Microsoft culture and that the company would benefit more from an outsider." Further down the ladder are former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig and former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller, at 7-1 and 15-1 odds, respectively. Kaplan says Rosensweig makes an unlikely Sarah Palin-like choice for Microsoft, while Miller is an even longer shot thanks to the non-compete as part of his AOL departure.

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