New CEO at About.com

Following up my post About.com's CEO Exits (8 March 2008), NYtimes.com announced this week that Times Hires New Chief of the About Group: 'The New York Times Company announced on Wednesday the appointment of Cella M. Irvine as chief executive of the About Group, which includes About.com, the information and advice Web site.'

If you're interested in the business side of web media, you might like this: Boosting About's Display Ad Revenue Is Top Priority for New CEO.

Boosting About's display ad business is a top priority for the new CEO. [...] Irvine indicated one of her focus areas will be to build more display ad revenue. She noted About's cost-per-click advertising business continues to perform well, but added it's dealing with display ad price pressure and issues related to unsold inventory.

Display ads are the banners and images that promote a product or service. The phrase 'unsold inventory' refers to content pages that don't carry a real ad. In other words, About.com has more content than they can sell ads for. This explains why so many of their pages carry ads pointing at other About.com services, or even worse, at disreputable services like downloading ring tones.