Google ad exec tapped to head AOL

Time Warner's CEO Jeff Bewkes announced this evening that AOL's current chairman and CEO Randy Falco will be replaced by Tim Armstrong, President of Google's American Operations and board member of the Advertising Council, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and The Advertising Research Foundation.

Bewkes called Armstrong an advertising pioneer, who has "a stellar reputation and proven track record." Armstrong will also be of crucial importance in Time Warner's decisions about the future of the AOL brand.

The timing of this appointment could prove critical in several aspects of AOL's business. The advancement of AOL Classifieds, which is a classified advertisement service, for one, stands to benefit from Armstrong's expertise in the advertising field. AOL Classifieds is stepping up to Craigslist and the weakening eBay by selling classified ad listings based upon their visibility. The pool of listings comes from some 80,000 sources from Oodle, including MySpace Classifieds, Washington Post Express, and Petfinder.com.

Even further into Armstrong's realm of expertise is AOL's Platform-A advertising network, which is actually more successful than both Yahoo and Google in terms of US online audience reach.

Bewkes announced that CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant will be leaving the company after Armstrong transitions into the leadership position. "Under Randy and Ron, AOL's programming sites exhibited year-over-year growth in unique visitors for 23 consecutive months with many of its sites now in the top five of their categories," Bewkes said. "They also assembled Platform-A, the number one display ad network in the US with a reach of more than 90%. They also aggressively cut costs as they restructured the Audience business portion of the company into three distinct operating units: People Networks, MediaGlow, and Platform-A. As Randy and Ron move on, they leave AOL with our gratitude and appreciation for remaking the company and bringing it to a new and promising level."

This is all part of a continuing evolution at AOL, which has successfully transitioned the company from the number one ISP of the dialup era into the #4 Web property owner in the US, whose sites attract some 57% of all US Internet users.