Discovery Cherry Picks an AOL Vet for a Not-So-Dirty Job

From the Washington Post

Discovery Communications has hired former AOL advertising executive Kathleen Kayse to run the Silver Spring cable giant's digital ad sales operation.

Kayse is a Time Warner veteran, having held a number of positions there, including publisher of People magazine.

Most recently, she has been a marketing executive at AOL's Platform A advertising business. Among other functions, Platform A serves advertising to online sites such as Facebook. Time Warner announced on Wednesday that it would split AOL into two pieces, "access" and "audience," the latter of which includes the Platform A properties.

As we all know, the past year has seen Discovery making massive changes in preparation of a 3rd Quarter IPO.  Among other things, going public would allow Discovery to buy on credit as opposed to making its acquisitions in cash. By hiring a seasoned online advertising vet Discovery is gearing themselves up to have a profitable digital empire.  Now I'm all about promotion from within, but when you're looking for someone to head up an totally new venture, it makes more than a little sense to bring in a vet.  Couple Kayse with a team who know Discovery and its viewers inside and out and they could generate a lot of ad revenue that would in turn allow for a lot of high-quality and interesting online content.