Huffington Post’s new CEO says ads growing at 100% per year

June 15, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

hippeauEric Hippeau was the CEO of Ziff-Davis for seven years, from 1993 until 2000 when the company was sold. Now, Hippeau — a managing partner at venture powerhouse Softbank Capital — has moved from an advisory role to CEO of the Huffington Post, one of the most critically successful blog publications to date. Can he make it pay off financially?

Hippeau’s interview with PaidContent is standard CEO talk: We could make the company profitable tomorrow, etc. That’s probably true, but more interesting is Hippeau’s claim that the HuffPo’s ad revenue is growing at 100 percent per year right now.

Hippeau won’t say how much total ad revenue that is, but the ratio is hard to swallow. Internet publishers, most notably my former boss Nick Denton at Gawker Media, have been telling everyone Internet advertising is going to hell. Is the HuffPo doubling at Moore’s Law rates? More likely,  Hippeau’s “100 percent a year” that sets off my Bad Math Detector is his way of saying ad sales at the Post are only now getting off the ground. Maybe that’s one reason the company has a new CEO.

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Merl
    Paul Boutin:writing::the Wopper:hamburgers
  • GL
    Funny, especially because the Wopper is a nonexistent word.
  • I serve on a board with Eric (Associated Content) and believe he will bring a great deal to Huffington Post as CEO. Eric has a tremendous understanding of the online media space and is very well connected. I look forward to seeing the company's progress in what is a very exciting and rapidly changing sector.

    Warren Lee
    www.yetanothervc.com
  • I have got to believe that your assumption about the lack of prior comparable revenue makes Hippeau's claims accurate.

    On a side-note: on the HuffPo splash page there are basically 1 or 2 ads in total. Maybe this is contributing to the dramatic increase?