In a move that will surely have Madison Avenue talking, well-known online advertising sales executive Wenda Harris Millard–who is now president of New York- and Los Angeles-based media consultancy Media Link–is poised to take over all advertising sales at MySpace, sources said.

But, in an unusual twist, the former Yahoo and Martha Stewart exec will remain in her job at Media Link, which has also been hired by MySpace to advise on restructuring the social networking company’s salesforce.

Current President of Sales and Marketing Jeff Berman will be leaving the company, MySpace has told employees via an internal memo.

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Microsoft is searching for a major executive to run its world-wide online sales, said several sources close to the situation, even as talks with Yahoo about a deal to partner in its search and display advertising businesses continue.

“They need to find a way to make money in display,” said one source close to the situation. “Or, I guess, find a way to not lose quite so much.”

The software giant has been trying to build its online business for many years now, spending a lot of money and not getting very much traction.

Meanwhile, the talks Microsoft has been having with Yahoo about outsourcing its online display sales to the Internet giant, among other scenarios, continue.

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The one truly interesting factoid in The Wall Street Journal’s piece about the efficacy (or lack thereof) of Facebook’s engagement ads today was one about its results in the graphical ad business versus rival MySpace.

As it turns out, the audience-lagging MySpace smokes Facebook when it comes to selling ads.

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To be fair, the whole market was dragged down today due to worries about a deepening recession. But Yahoo’s ever-decreasing share price has got to have the company and its investors mighty worried.

Hitting lows not seen since the dot-com doldrums of 2001 and 2002, Yahoo closed at $15.58, down $1.38 or 8.14 percent, giving the troubled Internet giant a market cap of just $22.08 billion.

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In what is both a surprising and not-so-surprising move, Yahoo has replaced its top U.S. ad sales exec with one from Microsoft.

The departure of Dave Karnstedt, who took over last year when longtime Yahoo ad sales exec Wenda Millard left Yahoo in the first of many controversial partings, has been long rumored internally.

Karnstedt will join Redpoint Ventures and is being replaced by Joanne Bradford, a longtime and well-known Microsoft exec who decamped from the software giant to helm national ad sales at the trendy start-up Spot Runner just six months ago.

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In its ongoing bid to prove there is a robust and sustainable ad business in the social networking space, widgetmaker Slide opened a New York office and hired a big deal online ad exec.

Of course, because it has to be hip, the office is in the always trendy West Village, instead of uptown on Madison Avenue.

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