AOL LLC chief executive Tim Armstrong (pictured) was involved in plenty of deals during his
nine-year career at Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). And Michael Adair, who headed North American sales finance at the search giant for four-and-a-half years worked with him on many of them. So we were happy to get Adair's take on Armstrong's latest gig leading a soon-to-be-independent
AOL.
"I wasn't surprised to see Tim move. I was surprised to see him move to AOL. He's got quite a challenge ahead of him" -- but also a big opportunity, says Adair, who recently left display advertising provider Glam Media Inc., where he was VP of corporate development. "AOL did have a shining-star brand, and this spinoff is an opportunity for a rebirth and a chance to re-energize employees. He could rebrand AOL or he may even consider changing the name."
Reinvigorating the brand would likely assist AOL in the display advertising space, which the company sees as its best opportunity for growth. It could help drive traffic to AOL-branded content and increase partnership opportunities with other content providers, both of which could lift advertising sales.
Display advertising is a highly fragmented space. Joining AOL are hundreds of small players, including Adair's previous employer Glam and tech heavyweights Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) and, yes, Google.
"Google spent about $7 billion to try and get into display advertising while I was there," says Adair, who left Google in July 2008. "They were trying to replicate their success on the search side." And many of those deals -- including the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in March 2008 -- happened under Armstrong's watch.
As our Dealscape colleague Mary Kathleen Flynn
noted recently, reigniting an entrepreneurial fire inside AOL is also part of Armstrong's strategy for reviving the company. "Spinning off the company will help, because the equity will be tied to AOL, not just Time Warner," says Adair. "I think that will be a huge driver. Tim is also very good at setting a vision and a huge target for people to strive for."
Of course, selling employees on a new AOL is the easy part. The real test will be selling his strategy and vision to Wall Street.
- Suzanne Stevens
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