Peter Horan has been tapped as CEO, IAC Media and Advertising, overseeing Ask.com, Citysearch, consumer applications and portals, and the ad sales group. Release.
Update:  Just got off the phone with Peter Horan, who is working out transition plans at AllBusiness.com, where he has been CEO since leaving About.com and the New York Times Company in May 2005. First, the details about his new job, which he plans to start within the month, then some excerpts from our interview:
-- As CEO of IAC Media & Advertising, he will be responsible for growing those businesses. (This has nothing to do with Michael Jackson’s programming mission in the emerging businesses group.) Technically he is replacing Steve Berkowitz, who left the company for Microsoft last April; he was Search & Media CEO.  Horan’s role has been expanded to include Citysearch and Evite so the job now matches the way IAC groups businesses by sector for financial reporting.
-- He will report to IAC president and COO Doug Lebda. In turn, the CEOs of the various businesses in the new group will report to him: Jim Lanzone, Ask.com, Briggs Ferguson, Citysearch, Richard Stalzer, IAC Advertising Solutions, and Scott Garell, IAC Consumer Applications and Portals. He will be based in Oakland, where the group of 800 or so is headquartered, so no moving required.
From the interview: Horan said he wasn’t looking for a move but it was “impossible to say no.” IAC and Horan are both very careful to make sure this isn’t viewed as someone coming in to fix things. Horan: “This isn’t a turnaround situation. It’s not as if these businesses are challenged—these are really successful business and the challenge is how do you take to next level. In the last quarter reported, 3Q06, the group had a post-amortization loss of $2.1 million on revenues of $135.5 million—and year-over-year growth of 62 percent; operating income before amortization was $15.9 million, up 71 percent.  It represents about 10 percent of IAC’s total business. (By comparison, the last time we wrote about AllBusiness.com, it had just received $12.3 million in third-round funding.)
At About.com, Horan and his team made search pay by optimizing the sites and information. At IAC/i, he has to make search pay in different ways. “In some ways, it’s an extension of that whole process. ... It’s fundamentally the same problem: how do people find the information they’re looking for? ... it’s a three-screen frontier.”
No major exec changes: I asked about Lanzone’s role. Horan: “Jim is and will be CEO of Ask.com worldwide; he’s been doing a phenomenal job. I expect Jim’s role to grow with Ask.” He also said there are no plans to change top execs at the other businesses—“so we can really focus on the future and on growing the business.”
Related:
-- Interview: Peter Horan, CEO, AllBusiness.com
-- MSN Hires Away Ask CEO To Head Online
-- Jim Lanzone is Ask.com’s New CEO, After Berkowitz Goes To MSN