Former top Yahoo advertising exec David Karnstedt (pictured here), who has been parked at a Silicon Valley venture firm since he left the company, has been named president and CEO of Efficient Frontier.

Interestingly, another former Yahoo (YHOO) exec, Ellen Siminoff, has also been CEO at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search engine marketing firm. She is now chairman.

Karnstedt, who was SVP of of Yahoo’s North American sales until last fall, replaces James Beriker.

He has most recently been an executive-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures, an investor in Efficient Frontier.

Here is an interview I did with Karnstedt in 2007, when he was at Yahoo.

And here is the full press release:

Efficient Frontier Names David Karnstedt as President and CEO

Former Redpoint Ventures Executive-in-Residence and Senior Vice President of Yahoo!’s North American Sales Brings Extensive Experience to the Post

Sunnyvale, Calif. – April 2, 2009 – Efficient Frontier, the worldwide leader in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) technology and services, today announced that David Karnstedt has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of the company.

Karnstedt most recently was an Executive-in-Residence at Redpoint Ventures, an investor in Efficient Frontier. Prior to Redpoint, he served as Senior Vice President of Yahoo!’s North American Sales with responsibility for more than $3 billion in revenue. During his tenure at Yahoo!, he successfully led the integration of the Search and Display sales teams into one central unit and helped establish Yahoo! as a recognized leader in both display and search marketing.

“We feel incredibly fortunate to have someone of David’s caliber join Efficient Frontier at this point in the company’s life cycle,” said Ellen Siminoff, Chairwoman of Efficient Frontier’s Board of Directors. “David’s extensive experience in the Internet space – specifically search – will be a huge asset as he leads the company forward.”

Karnstedt’s experience includes several industry firsts. Prior to Yahoo!, David led the Direct Sales team at Overture Services, the company that pioneered the paid search industry and was acquired by Yahoo! in 2003. He also served as Vice President and General Manager of Alta Vista, where he was responsible for the consumer business and helped shape product development and marketing strategies that leveraged the auctions-based search approach. Prior to Alta Vista, David served as Western Advertising Director at Wired Digital where he helped to develop some of the first advertising models on the Web. He is also active in the industry, having served on both the Advertising Council and Interactive Advertising Association’s Boards of Directors.

“As the leading global Search Engine Marketing company, Efficient Frontier has built tremendous assets –
including its technology platform, a global presence and a great team,” said David Karnstedt. “I plan to build on these key assets by expanding the company’s leadership in search, diversifying into complimentary product offerings and increasing its global presence. I am pleased to lead the company into its next phase of growth.”

Karnstedt is replacing James Beriker, who held executive positions at the company since April 2007 and was its President, CEO and a member of the Board of Directors from February 2008 until March 2009. The company’s business expanded significantly while James was CEO. We are appreciative of his efforts and contributions.

I made the point to Dave (he is the kind of guy you can call Dave, as you can see pictured here), that an ad guy needs to sell himself, but to no avail, so we press on in text. Nonetheless, let me set the visual scene:

Nicest guy you ever want to meet walks into nondescript room, wearing khaki-oxford-jacket Internet uniform 101. Declares Yahoo is going to kick some advertising butt in the nicest possible way. It is revealed this nice guy has been around the Web block for quite a while. Much chitter-chatter ensues. Cut to my clear-as-Fiji-water observation that nice guy, as nice as he is, has his work cut out for him.

Indeed, Yahoo saw a disturbing falloff in its graphical ad-display business in the last quarter, just as its new system for better monetizing its search business, called Panama, finally got geared up–much, much too long an integration after Yahoo’s purchase of Overture in 2001.

In the wake of these results, Yahoo parted ways rather cloddishly with its longtime ad sales head Wenda Millard. In her place, Karnstedt was installed as head of all North American advertising sales, consolidating both Web-search ads and display ads.

Karnstedt, 41, used to be in charge of just the U.S. search-ad sales, coming to Yahoo from the botched Overture integration, and said it was time is to provide “holistic” solutions to clients. While in that division, he was responsible for selling sponsored search and other analytic products.

New Yahoo President Sue Decker acknowledged the error of the company’s ways in the recent quarterly call. “It is now apparent that by not integrating right away, we did not see as quickly as we might have the requirements to invest in the core product applications and technology platforms, delaying the development of Panama and allowing our competition to establish a monetization lead,” she said. “While we have more work to do, we are now fully integrating Overture throughout the organization and are very pleased with the initial performance of Panama.”

Karnstedt was diplomatic about the inability of Yahoo to use the prescient purchase to keep up with Google, which used the opportunity to run away with the search-ad business. “The decision at the time was to leave [Overture] separate,” he said. “Everything has its time.”

Perhaps, and perhaps Yahoo has finally fixed its search-ad problem with Panama. But then there’s the display-ad issue too and, while he is well-liked within Yahoo, some outside see Karnstedt as only a search-ad exec, more concerned with perfecting algorithms than wooing real live clients, a talent that the big-brand-loving Millard had in spades.

But Karnstedt noted he has longtime experience on both sides of the aisle and that what is happening now is just a further development of the past. “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” he said.

In fact, Karnstedt, a University of Illinois grad, made his way through a series of Internet concerns, some more successful than others, and does have a lot of more traditional online-ad experience. That includes his stints as Western ad director for Wired Digital Lycos, and as general manager of former search powerhouse AltaVista’s search group.

Karnstedt is talking the right talk, to be sure. “We want to really leverage our connection with the Yahoo user,” he said, pointing to recent campaigns with companies like Hellmann’s mayonnaise that include Webisodes and other more integrated advertising solutions. “And get them more engaged in the content too.”

In addition, he said another Yahoo plus is its ability to offer clients more products, especially in content features like its successful Answers product, where Google is not as strong.

“This is old school…how to get things to work together,” noted Karnstedt. “[But] I don’t look at Google like I look at Yahoo.”

It is nice to hear a Yahoo exec not obsessing on Google–and maybe it’s just wishful thinking, especially since No. 3 Microsoft is aiming to use its power to take Yahoo’s No. 2 spot.

While Karnstedt said that being a distant second was not his desire and he is appropriately wary of the powerful Microsoft, he is right that the market was only growing, and having a competitive position like Yahoo does still put it in a good seat for future growth.

He also is heartened by the momentum he said will surely come with Yahoo’s founder Jerry Yang becoming its CEO recently in all the management shake-ups, which also included the departure of high-profile CEO Terry Semel.

“People are excited to have Jerry as head, as he is passionate and people like that,” said Karnstedt.

Which is, as you might imagine, a very nice thing to say.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

That included Millard herself, who called me back this morning from New York to talk about her leaving the company for another high-profile job as president of media at Martha Stewart Omnimedia.

Her quick exit last weekend caused Yahoo to lash back at her in a press release, essentially suggesting she was not qualified for her Yahoo duties anymore.

It’s one thing to think Millard was not quite right for the new challenges Yahoo faces in the ad business and a need to focus more on technical solutions, which she even seems to agree with, but it’s another thing to publicly give her a hard time for it.

In any case, the encounter ripped back the curtains on executive infighting at Yahoo, which is in the midst of some wrenching changes.

“I am very disturbed that Yahoo chose to turn my resignation into something that it was not,” said Millard. “I feel very sorry for Yahoo these days.”

Well, who doesn’t, given all the focus on its management turmoil and wobbly vision of late at the Web giant, capped last week by the news that CEO Terry Semel was giving up his job to Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang?

Millard attributed the behavior toward her to the intense pressure top executives are feeling because of relentlessly bad headlines, and especially because of the even worse news about the business.

The company has been buffeted by competition from Google in the search ad arena and more recently has seen a hit in its graphical display ad business.

Even Yahoo sources hostile to Millard, an experienced online ad exec, said she deserves credit for revitalizing its ability to sell to major-brand advertisers when she came on in 2001.

But they also said she was probably about to get the lion’s share of the blame for an expected falloff in graphical ad sales at Yahoo in its upcoming quarterly report.

That’s an area Millard was in charge of, and she acknowledged that the company needed to overhaul the way it sold advertising.

She said she was, in fact, part of the integration that has been going on for over a year about how to bring all ad sales together to sell in a more efficient manner.

As part of those changes, she said she was, in fact, open to the idea that she would take over international ad sales. “I had done the U.S. for six years and I thought it might be interesting,” she said.

Yahoo sources tell a different version, of course, claiming that Millard had become uncooperative over the last year and resistant to the changes being made, especially the new focus on “performance” advertising rather than brand ads that she preferred.

“Wenda really excelled in the branded ad business, where it is all about the emotional links people have to products,” said one exec at Yahoo. “But this was an environment where now it was all about measurement of ad results, and she resisted.”

Noting that executives at Yahoo always debate alternatives and that she did not always agree with every direction chosen, Millard scoffed at the characterization that she had become obstructive.

And she denied especially one particular story Yahoo sources related to me as an example of her difficulty: That she got into an ugly public fight at a recent ad confab in Cannes with the man who took over for her.

That would be David Karnstedt, pictured here, who is now the head of Yahoo’s now-coordinated North American advertising sales and who used to be in charge of just the U.S. search ad sales.

“Don’t you think that would be in the papers given all the focus on Yahoo?” said Millard. “It’s just silly.”

Millard said that she was simply approached by MSLO CEO Susan Lyne about coming to the media company many months ago. More recently, she thought it was a better move than the international job at Yahoo.

Lyne backed Millard on this timeline and said in an email that she tried to work with Yahoo to coordinate the announcement, to no avail.

Both she and Millard were then stunned to read a remarkably sour-grapes quote in a press release attributed to Gregory Coleman, the executive vice president of global sales.

“While Wenda was a big contributor to our success in the past, the industry has shifted and requires a different set of skills to take the business forward,” he said.

That seems to translate into: She can’t get on board with this newfangled ad business.

That contention seems patently questionable and makes an old pro like Millard seem bizarrely stubborn.

While intense data focus in the ad business is clearly not Millard’s forte (but it is Karnstedt’s), to contend that all her skills were now obsolete seemed odd, too.

In any case, MSLO thinks she has what it takes, putting her in charge of a number of businesses, including online, publishing, TV and radio.

And so did many ad players who contacted me yesterday. “She is a star,” said one person, who was a longtime rival of Millard’s at another big online company. “And worse for Yahoo is that advertisers love her, so this makes them look really petty.”

Millard said she feels blindsided, noting that she did not think her relationships at Yahoo had become that frayed.

“I always had great relationships there and had six great years there,” she said. “So I am stunned.”

I am hoping to talk to both Coleman and Karnstedt today about all this–they are at another Yahoo ad confab in Long Island, where they are trying to figure out ways to get the company’s ad business back on track.

And that’s a big enough issue to deal with without all this self-inflicted noise.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google. ]]> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20070626/wenda-speaks/feed/ 0 http://kara.allthingsd.com/20070625/wenda-was-robbed/ http://kara.allthingsd.com/20070625/wenda-was-robbed/#comments Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:53:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20070625/wenda-was-robbed/