SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo!, which has seen three senior executives depart in the past month, has announced it had hired Ross Levinsohn, a former president of News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media, to head its Americas operations.
Levinsohn, who will join Yahoo! in November, will be responsible for the Internet company's media group, advertising sales, and partnerships for the Americas region.
"Ross has a phenomenal track record of executing digital media strategies that increase user engagement and, most importantly, accelerate topline growth," Yahoo! chief executive Carol Bartz said in a statement.
"I am confident that Ross's strategic vision, in addition to his deep industry experience, will allow us to solidify our position as the largest digital media, content and communications business around the globe."
Levinsohn replaces Hilary Schneider, one of three top Yahoo! executives whose departures were announced last month in the latest management turmoil at the Sunnyvale, California-based Internet portal.
Yahoo! boasts a monthly audience of more than 600 million users but investors have been disappointed by several quarters of flat revenue and uncertain strategic direction.
Bartz was brought in last year to turn around Yahoo!'s fortunes after the previous chief executive, co-founder Jerry Yang, rejected a takeover offer from Microsoft.
But Yahoo!'s stock price has remained largely stagnant and there has been an exodus of executives to other companies since Bartz took over in January 2009.
Levinsohn joins Yahoo! from Fuse Capital, an investment and strategic equity management firm that he co-founded and where he served as managing director.
He previously held senior management positions at Fox, where he directed the Rupert Murdoch-owned company's digital strategy, piloting its 2005 purchase of Myspace for 580 million dollars and a lucrative ad contract with Google.
Levinsohn previously worked at AltaVista, an early pioneer in Web search, the sports site CBS Sportsline and the television network HBO.
"Yahoo! is one of the premier Internet companies in the world," Levinsohn said. "Having this opportunity to work with a group of immensely talented people to enhance Yahoo!'s leadership position is a once in a lifetime opportunity."
Yahoo! and its Web search partner Microsoft announced meanwhile that they have completed the integration of all advertising accounts to the Microsoft Advertising adCenter platform.
Yahoo! and Microsoft said that adCenter was now powering all paid search advertisements on Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo! partner sites and publisher networks in the United States and Canada.
"Managing a single account for both Bing and Yahoo! will let advertisers save time and simplify their campaigns," they said in a statement.
Microsoft and Yahoo! reached an agreement last year which calls for the US software giant's Bing search engine to eventually power searches at all Yahoo! websites.
(source:afp)
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