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Bringing Together AOL's Ad Network
AOL veteran Lynda M. Clarizio will become the president of Platform A today.
(Courtesy Aol - Handout)
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However, she said it was crucial that AOL push forward, given the challenge from Google, which is moving closer to completing its acquisition of display-advertising king DoubleClick, and Microsoft, which has bid for Yahoo. The potential Google-DoubleClick and Microsoft-Yahoo networks would dwarf AOL's online ads sales many times over.
Clarizio, who will continue to work out of Advertising.com's Baltimore headquarters, in an old Procter & Gamble building, comes to the task with experience in several elements of AOL's business.
A Princeton graduate and Harvard-trained lawyer, she came to Washington in 1985 to work on international law for white-shoe firm Arnold & Porter. She married a career Foreign Service officer, who most recently served as a top Commerce Department official, and turned to the local business scene when she had kids and wanted to stop traveling as much.
In 1996, AOL became her client. She had never heard of the company; she went to a bookstore to buy a book explaining the Internet.
In 1999, when AOL was the dominant Internet company in the country, she joined the firm, focusing on mergers and acquisitions. In that capacity, she learned the challenges of merging cultures, particularly after AOL's purchase of Time Warner in 2001. At the time, it was hailed as a brilliant move, but the marriage did not go well.
"We learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work," Clarizio said. "Culture issues play a big part of it."
When she took over Advertising.com in 2006, she faced culture issues anew. But she is credited with managing them deftly.
"A lot of folks said, 'Well, we lose some of the entrepreneurial spirit that we had now that AOL has got more involved,' " said Don Kennedy, the top sales executive at Advertising.com. "She was really dedicated to keeping the culture here and keeping the communication going."
Rob Luenberger, Advertising.com's chief scientist, said Clarizio understands that to succeed, Platform A must make clear to customers it can offer something different -- the best technology to target ads.
"We have world-class scientists working here, . . . and she embraced that," he said.
