AOL UK chief marketing officer Ireland set to depart

by Mark Banham, Brand Republic 16-Feb-07, 13:00

LONDON - Tobin Ireland, the chief marketing officer at AOL, is set to leave the internet company as part of cutbacks in its marketing department in the UK.

Ireland is a former commercial director at broadcaster BSkyB, where he was responsible for building the Sky interactive platform. Prior to that, he was the chief executive at online clothes retailer boo.com.

He was responsible for marketing and communications for AOL across the UK.

In addition to Ireland's departure, AOL UK's director of communications Jonathan Lambeth will be leaving his post after more than four years in the role.

In November, AOL appointed Andy Jonesco, its senior vice-president of audience, to the newly created role of AOL UK managing director.

AOL is in the process of recasting itself as a portal-only business in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands, and Jonesco's appointment is viewed as part of that ongoing strategy.

Jonesco, a former managing director of Express Newspapers, will oversee the company's business through its UK portal and its partnership with Carphone Warehouse. He joined AOL in May 2002 as commercial director.

Carphone Warehouse picked up AOL's UK ISP operations in October 2006 for £370m in a final auction process against BSkyB.

The two sides have also agreed a revenue-share deal based on AOL providing co-branded content and services and managing online ad sales for all former AOL and Carphone Warehouse customers.

The deal made Carphone Warehouse the third-largest broadband provider in the UK, after BT and the then NTL/Telewest, by adding AOL's 1.5m broadband and 0.6m dial-up customers to the 625,000 customers who signed up Carphone Warehouse's Talk Talk broadband service, launched in early 2006.

AOL UK has been through a swathe of redundancies over the past few months with more than 100 staff expected to leave.