Peter Horan is the recently named CEO of IAC Search and Media. He leads a group of businesses that includes Ask.com, CitySearch, eVite, Consumer Applications, and the Advertising Solutions group. I've known Peter Horan for a while now and have found him to be a profound thinker about media, interactive media and the various ways that publishers can combine traditional articles with social media like blogs, comment and different sorts of reader forum. I first interviewed him shortly after he left About.com and moved over to head up Allbusiness.com.
Then, on January 17, I heard the news that Peter had taken a new job as CEO of IAC Media and Advertising. I was instantly pleased for Peter, but also curious about how a long-standing publisher makes the move over to search, so I asked him for another interview.
Here's what he had to say.
Brad Berens: Tell me about your new job. When it comes to titles, I don't usually see "CEO" modified, yet you're the "CEO of IAC Media and Advertising." Looking over the IAC management page, it looks like there are lots of CEOs of different things. How do you think that you will overlap with them? And, is this a newly created position?
Peter Horan: My job is one of two segment CEO positions within IAC. Mindy Grossman has a similar position within retail. It is a new position that rolls up the position that Steve Berkowitz held before he left for Microsoft, plus CitySearch and Ad Solutions. Each of these companies has its own CEO because they are run as separate businesses.
My focus is forward looking and growth-oriented. These businesses are well-run and well-positioned, but we are competing with formidable players. We need to outgrow the market and to be first to market with innovative products.
Berens: What does "outgrow the market" mean? And, faced with the Google, Yahoo! and MSN-shaped challenges you have on the search front, what innovations might you be eyeing and how is that good for advertisers?
Clearly, the gold standard for all search is a combo platter of relevancy of search results and a limit on how many results a query brings. For example, Cranky.com just launched with a fewer-results-per-page-for-older-people product. What might you see coming from Ask.com?
Horan: We need to take market share away from the other big players. The good news is that the search wars are far from over. Search is far from perfect. Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask, is leading the charge to give users a significantly better overall search experience: great results, cleaner more intuitive interfaces and less clutter. By innovating in ways that are meaningful to the consumer, we will grow much faster than the market.
Berens: The businesses are separate and have distinct CEOs, but surely IAC must be eyeing some sort of integration across platforms... No?
Horan: Although the businesses are and will continue to be run separately, they already share many backend services. We're not looking for significant new cost savings. My job is about finding ways for these businesses, and other IAC businesses, to work together to grow faster.
Berens: You're coming from a long and prestigious history as a publisher. Moreover, over the last couple of years you and I have spent some time chatting about how different kinds of online content -- features, blogs, comments and user forums -- can all overlap and interrelate. Now, suddenly, you're transmogrifying into a search guy. How do you get from point A to point B? What's the connection?
Horan: Prestigious? Thanks! I view this new job as evolution not revolution. For the past few years, I have been focused on the ways that search has been revolutionizing media. Users increasingly use search to discover and navigate quality content.
In the past, I met the readers after they clicked the link on a search engine. Now I am moving closer to the start of their information gathering process. My focus is still on helping users find the best and most relevant content and on helping marketers efficiently reach their best customers… without annoying them.
Berens: Before we move on to the next round, what am I not asking you that I should be?
Horan: I'd like to mention that IAC is a huge ad platform. We have more than 60 million unique visitors every month. And no one knows. We've recently appointed Rich Stalzer as the head of the IAC Ad Solutions group in NYC, and he's building out a solid team.
Next: Advertising in a world of exploding media
