Yahoo Reorganizes, Schneider Now Sits Atop Sales & Marketing

The New York Times and PaidContent report on a new reorganization at Yahoo. Among the changes, Executive Vice President of Sales Greg Coleman will be leaving Yahoo early next year and Hilary Schneider has been promoted to EVP to lead a new group called “Global Partner Solutions,” which is now responsible for sales, marketing and business development. David Karnstedt, SVP, North American Sales, who oversees the newly combined search and display ad efforts, will report to Schneider.

Here are some excerpts from Sue Decker’s memo (from the WSJ) announcing the changes:

First, we are placing responsibility for all of our “partners” – advertisers, agencies, resellers, publishers, ad networks, developers, or others—in a new division called, Global Partner Solutions (GPS), under the leadership of Hilary Schneider. This new group will be charged with creating, delivering and coordinating global best practices for solutions to all of our partners. Furthermore, this unit will have direct responsibility for our U.S. go-to-market efforts (i.e., sales, marketing and business development) across:

* all ad formats, including search, display, video, mobile, listings, etc. * all online marketing objectives, including brand, performance, promotional, and * all customer types and sizes, including large enterprises, small online businesses, and local brick and mortar companies.

Business development deals for Mobile and content the will continue to be led by Connected Life and the Yahoo! Network Division, respectively, and will work in close coordination with GPS.

The second major organizational change we are announcing today is that we are moving the properties in the Local Markets and Commerce Division (LMC), excluding HotJobs, from Hilary’s organization into the Yahoo! Network Division under Jeff Weiner’s strong leadership . . . In addition, the engineering function will also moved to align with the product team and will report into Venkat Panchapakesan.

Also, in an effort to create better alignment with the core business units, we are moving Cammie Dunaway, CMO, and her Customer Experience organization to report to me.

As a result of these changes, my direct reports now include Hilary Schneider—EVP of Global Partner Solutions; Jeff Weiner – EVP of the Yahoo! Network Division; Marco Boerries – EVP, Connected Life; Toby Coppel – Head of Yahoo! Europe; Keith Nilsson – Head of Emerging Markets; Rose Tsou – Head of the Asia Region; a soon to be hired EVP—Marketing Products Division; Cammie Dunaway—CMO; Jeff McCombs – my Chief of Staff and VP, Business Management; and Greg Coleman (through February 2008).

CEO Jerry Yang said in the last earnings call that there would be no “sacred cows” in trying to turn around the company’s performance. These personnel moves appear to be consistent with that pledge and President Sue Decker also appears to be putting her “stamp” on the executive team with this reorganization.

Postscript: More Yahoo personnel news from MediaPost and Todd Bishop’s Seattle PI blog. From the former, Mike Weetman of Yahoo’s Network division is leaving to become COO of BermanBraun, the online production company formed by former Yahoo exec. Lloyd Braun and ex-Paramount Pictures president Gail Berman. From the latter, Yahoo has hired Korby Parnell, a Microsoft product manager as senior product manager on the Yahoo Platforms & Technology team. He’ll reportedly remain in Seattle-Redmond.