Google's New Advangelist

Just days after the Wall Street Journal floated Asia ad sales chief Sukhinder Singh Cassidy as a possible replacement for outgoing Senior Vice President Tim Armstrong, Google has gone in a different direction. The company has tapped Dennis Woodside—Google's head of ad sales for the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Benelux—to take over Armstrong's duties handling sales in the Americas.

Silicon Alley Insider has Woodside's LinkedIn resume (Stanford law degree, M&A attorney, management consultant), as well as Global Sales Vice President Omid Kordestani's internal memo singing Woodside's praises. (Did you know he's a triathlete? It's true. But his golf game sucks.) "In the five and a half years that Dennis has been at Google (that's over half our company's lifetime) he's brought incredible integrity and entrepreneurialism to everything he's done," Kordestani writes. "I remember Dennis setting off from Mountain View in 2005, a year and a half after he joined, to start our direct sales operations in Eastern Europe, which he quickly transformed into a substantial part of our business."

PaidContent.org's Staci Kramer has a few thoughts about what Woodside's appointment means for Google. Finding Armstrong's replacement so quickly demonstrates how much importance Google attaches to the job of handling ad sales in the Americas, she writes, but there's a risk involved in picking Woodside. A large part of handling advertisers is building and maintaining friendly relations with your customers, and Google, which has unnerved advertisers with its overwhelming monopoly power, had a recognized and well-regarded representative in Armstrong. But Madison Avenue doesn't know Woodside from Adam, since he's spent almost all his time in Europe. In addition, a lot of in-house talent was passed over for the job, and Woodside will have to work overtime to keep them on the team, in addition to stabilizing the search-ad business and building YouTube into a thriving concern. Looks like the man has his work cut out for him.