Since it acquired Tacoda last summer, AOL has done little with it but push top executives out of the company. 97 employees came over in the buy. Today, only 35 remain. The most notable departure was former Tacoda CEO Curt Viebranz, whom AOL promoted to head its advertising business, Platform-A. Viebranz was fired only five months later. Lynda Clarizio, the head of Advertising.com, AOL's online ad-network unit, took his job. And so it's no surprise that when VentureBeat intercepted an email from AOL to Tacoda clients, canceling all contracts within the next 30 days, that the blog jumped to conclusions and assumed Advertising.com stalwarts had finally had their way, killing Tacoda and its tech once and for all. A very juicy story indeed. Too bad it turned out not to be the case.When PaidContent reached Platform-A boss Lynda Clarizio on the train home from work, she said AOL only made the move to rationalize the division's contracts with publishers. After the integration, Tacoda's behavioral-targeting tech will be Platform-A's behavioral targeting tech. A single contract will let AOL fill ads spots it can't sell via Tacoda with Advertising.com's remnant ads, but CPM rates should stay the same, Clarizio said. Clarizio and other Advertising.com insiders opposed the Tacoda acquisition, believing their behavioral-targeting technology could command a similar lift in ad rates, so there's some pride-swallowing being done here. But the ouster of Tacoda's executives and the neutron-bomb elimination of two-thirds of its staff should salve that wound. Since we made the guess that Clarizio might be the a candidate to take charge of Microsoft's online division, insiders have laughed it off. Clarizio's a lawyer by training, they note — the ultimate diss in the tech world. But if this kind of inwardly directed knife-sharpening isn't what's called for in Redmond, we don't know what is.

When new AOL ad boss Lynda Clarizio replaced Curt Viebranz, his head was the sixth to roll at AOL since 2001. Viebranz followed Myer Berlow, Robert Friedman, Robert Sherman, Lisa Brown and Michael Kelly. Three lasted less than a year. None of them succeeded, according to Bits, because AOL's reputation on Madison Avenue remains tattered from the pre-merger days when Berlow and former AOL CEO Bob Pittman would spurn agencies to work directly with marketers, locking them into long-term deals at inflated prices. Take heed, Google's Tim Armstrong. (Photo by macloo)

With Curt Viebranz out, AOL's new advertising boss Lynda Clarizio plans to integrate the Time Warner subsidiary's various ad sales teams — those from acquisitions Tacoda and Quigo, for example — into one. That will create redundancies which Clarizio plans to handle by axing about half of AOL's sales force, Silicon Alley Insider reports. Top executives at Advertising.com will fill new roles running all of advertising for AOL.

Curt Viebranz, the CEO of AOL's ad sales unit Platform A, is leaving. AOL did not say why, but "sources" are suddenly tipping off a lot of blogs that he was fired. Viebranz, former head of Tacoda, joined Platform A at its inception last fall. The unit was supposed to house ad sales for all AOL units. Another AOL executive, Advertising.com president Linda Clarizio, will replace him. Advertising.com execs strongly opposed the Tacoda acquisition, saying Tacoda's technology was overrated. Guess who just won that argument?

AOL finished up its $340 million Quigo acquisition yesterday. To celebrate, Quigo CEO Mike Yavonditte will head for the door. He'll spend the next six months pretending to work as an adviser to Curt Viebranz, president of AOL's Platform A advertising division.

WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Is preternaturally tan conference organizer John Battelle, who runs online-ad network Federated Media, here to interview top industry executives — or cut some deals of his own? "There's this idea that you can sprinkle some pixie dust on all this inventory and make more money," he observes, speaking of the mass of Web ads sold at bargain-basement rates. AOL's Curt Viebranz says that ads sold on Tacoda — the startup he just sold to AOL for a reported $275 million — sell at a $4 cost per thousand viewers. When he hears that figure, Battelle raises his eyebrows and asked Viebranz to talk to him after the panel.

Search and ye shall find — steady employment in advertising, that is. That's the lesson I'm taking from Mike Kelly's abrupt ouster, announced today, as head of AOL's ad sales. How abrupt? Mediaweek just named him one of the 50 most influential people in advertising. If you haven't heard of Kelly, here's his resumé at a glance: A Time Inc. ad sales guy who rose to become publisher of Entertainment Weekly, Kelly was sent down by Time Warner to fix AOL's relationships with advertisers. He largely succeeded in that, and also spearheaded the acquisition of Advertising.com, an online ad network that places ads on third-party sites. Advertising.com has provided much of AOL's recent growth in ad revenues. But elsewhere, AOL's ad sales have stalled. Especially in search. And Kelly, fairly or unfairly, is getting the blame.