Peter Horan to Head IAC Media & Advertising
Focus will be on search and content.
IAC/InterActiveCorp has tapped Peter Horan for the role of CEO of IAC Media & Advertising. There, he’ll oversee IAC properties including Ask.com, Citysearch, and Evite.
Late next month, Horan will leave his CEO position at Allbusiness.com but told ClickZ that he “wasn’t looking, but it was too good an offer from too good a company to say ‘no.'”
He explained, “The idea is to bring together a lot of the search and local and advertising properties in one place and create some really compelling solutions.”
“What I’ve really focused on for the last several years is the way that search has changed media, and that was focused from the content side. But how people are finding and using information is changed everyday, and really it’s because of search. This gives me a chance to get closer to that process,” Horan said.
Heads of the Media & Advertising businesses within IAC will report to Horan, including Jim Lanzone of Ask.com; Briggs Ferguson of Citysearch; Richard Stalzer of IAC Advertising Solutions; and Scott Garell of IAC Consumer Applications and Portals. Horan will report to IAC President and COO Doug Lebda.
Horan also told ClickZ he’s not being brought in to fix issues with the company, but instead to help it attain the next level of development.
“This isn’t a turnaround, they’ve got great leadership, they’re putting up great numbers, so we really are saying, ‘how do we scale the next peak?'” he said.
Horan says what drew to the position is the challenge of integrating content and search with mobile and local technology.
“How people view media and search and commerce and community is changing. The lines have blurred, and we’re in a time where the great challenge is how do you make sense of all the different options,” he said. “In some ways, this is the next logical step, having a content guy go and get in the middle of search.”
Horan will fill the spot left vacant when Steve Berkowitz who went to Microsoft, but he notes IAC’s portfolio has broadened since that time. Previously, Horan was CEO of About.com through its sale to The New York Times Company. He also worked as president and CEO of DevX.com, an Internet media company that was later acquired by JupiterMedia.
