—Lacking in “nitty-gritty”?: Citing unidentified sources, Kara said AOL execs felt that Clarizio lacked the “nitty-gritty” sales acumen that the company desperately needs to pull out of its current slump. AOL vet Clarizio held a number of leadership posts in her roughly 10 years at the company, but her background was not in sales. The primary reason Clarizio was chosen for the post in the first place was to manage the integration of all the various parts of Platform-A. That process was deemed complete months ago and now, it’s a question of how well she did, apart from the greater emphasis on driving sales now. Before joining AOL’s ad net unit Advertising.com in May 2006, Clarizio was an EVP in charge of strategy, finance and business development of AOL’s Audience business. Clarizio had also been an SVP for corporate strategic and financial planning, as well as an SVP for acquisitions and strategic investments. In the latter role, she led AOL’s acquisition of Advertising.com. Clarizio came to AOL from the Washington D.C. law firm of Arnold & Porter, where she was a partner for seven years.

—Coleman’s long goodbye: Coleman left Yahoo about a year ago as EVP of Global Sales. A month later, he was named president and CEO of NetSeer, a startup focused on search and ad targeting. His exit from Yahoo occurred over a few months. When Yahoo initiated a major reorg in August ‘07, the company said then that Coleman would be leaving by February as Yahoo had already been experiencing slowing display growth.

—The official release is here.