U.S. Sales Chief Domeniconi to Exit Microsoft

Robin Domeniconi will soon leave Microsoft, where she has led U.S. ad sales for the past two years, AllThingsD reported.

While at Microsoft, Domeniconi defined a new sales structure for the company’s U.S. properties, abolishing balkanized product sales teams and pitching unified packages to individual brands. (“We can’t shove our products down an advertiser’s throat,” she told ClickZ shortly after her hire.)

She succeeded to an extent, overseeing a few big integrated ad deals such as one for Discovery Channel’s “The Deadliest Catch” which combined MSN, Microsoft Media Networks, Xbox, and other placements.

However her style over the years has often seemed an odd fit for Microsoft. When asked about technology issues over the course of several meetings with ClickZ, she often demurred, preferring to reiterate the power of brand.

“Everybody in this world has focused too much on technology and not enough on the audiences,” she said last September, when Microsoft unveiled a new branding strategy.

And she drew frequent analogies to the print and broadcast businesses where she got her start. In her last management job before Microsoft, Domeniconi was media group president at Time Inc., prior to which she led women’s lifestyle magazine Real Simple as publisher and president.

Meawhile Microsoft may be close to filling another top sales role. In the same report, AllThingsD stated Carolyn Everson, a head of U.S. sales at MTV Networks, may soon be named to oversee global ad sales.

Microsoft didn’t immediately return calls.