Google Hires Barry Salzman to Preside Over Display Ad Units

Google tapped a new exec to head all its display advertising businesses in the Americas, a new position.

Barry Salzman, a veteran of DoubleClick, will be Google’s first head of media and platforms, with oversight of YouTube, the Google Content Network, DoubleClick’s ad serving business, and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

His hire may signal a desire to centralize sales outreach to agencies and advertisers. Salzman will consolidate management of the company’s sprawling display sales teams in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. He reports to Henrique de Castro, the company’s VP of global media and platforms who replaced David Rosenblatt early last year.

Google is aggressively acquiring and launching businesses in the display ad space. Recent examples include the launch of its DoubleClick Ad Exchange last summer, and the late 2010 acquisitions of dynamic ad firm Teracent and mobile ad network AdMob.

Those efforts may be paying off in the form of increased investment from large brand advertisers. On the company’s Q4 earnings call, Global Sales President Nikesh Arora said the company had gotten a display revenue boost from big customers like Volvo and American Express.

On the same call, CEO Eric Schmidt called display advertising “the next huge business for us,” though he said other channels such as mobile may grow faster on a percentage basis because they’re smaller.

Barry Salzman is a veteran of DoubleClick from the days when it operated an ad network alongside its ad management tools. Between 1997 and 2002, he was president of DoubleClick International and later DoubleClick Global Media. He left the company around the time DoubleClick exited the media business, becoming COO of ShopWiki and CEO of YC Multimedia, which sells in-store digital media.

Salzman will not be responsible for the display advertising products themselves. That job belongs to VP of product management Neal Mohan.