Can ex-AOL Jonathan Miller revive Yahoo ads?

With Google being the hare and Yahoo the tortoise, can Miller ignite Yahoo's advertising platform?

If any search engine is to be the dominant force, like Google, it would have to really kick it up a notch in online advertising operations.

Despite the fact that Google's search engine is naturally the best for searching on certain terms, it is obvious to many that Google has only been financially successful, thanks to the Google Adwords platform. So enter the other competitors to Google - Yahoo and Microsoft - who are, of course, locked in a "battle" over whether or not Microsoft will buy Yahoo.

But what really intrigued me about this battle was the fact that Yahoo may give Jonathan Miller, formely of AOL, a board seat. This addition to Yahoo's board, would give the online media giant access to Miller and his insights and experience.

We have to wonder just how biased this article was really being particularly as Yahoo seems to be having positive talks with AOL and Time Warner about a potential deal to thwart Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft stopped that little party time and time again along with its new best bud Carl Icahn who has been a pain in Yahoo's behind.

The article said that John Miller, ex chief of AOL, had led the company to a very promising position making the key acquisition in the early days of advertising.com.

Of course, through my research, I stumbled across this article at The Guardian, in which it was suggested that this simply wasn't the case and that "AOL's online advertising revenues have been slipping back each quarter", also AOL has a mere "500 publishers" currently in its advertising network in case you didn't guess that is really not good!!

The most ridiculous point of the article came when JESDANUN of AP wrote:

"He could bring Yahoo insights he developed running AOL, and perhaps he could even run Yahoo if pressures to oust CEO Jerry Yang continue. "

Well as much as Yang hasn't really been that popular with the Yahoo shareholders what makes it true that Miller of AOL would be a better leader, maybe they should do a "Yahoo/AOL Swap" for a week and see how they cope with their new teams! Then come back at the end and discuss each others companies and what the other does wrong with their respective company!

But the writer of this article is so far off the mark with his suggestion. It is interesting, however, to see that bloggers are starting to make these types of suggestions!