Arianna’s Newest Knight In Shining Armour

We always found it strange the Huffington Post was unprofitable, what with the Web juggernaut’s traffic growth, editorial accomplishments and army of unpaid writers. It turns out HuffPo’s investors thought that was weird too. Time for a new ad man.

Though it’s garnered $US25 million in venture investment, HuffPo in January was making about one fourth the revenue of content competitor Salon.com, valued at just $US700,000 by the public markets. This might explain why Eric Hippeau, the investor CEO recently installed to fix HuffPo’s finances, has hired former Yahoo ad chief Greg Coleman as president and chief revenue officer, as reported by Kara Swisher of All Things . Coleman shoves aside, then, current Chief Revenue Office James Smith, who has been at HuffPo for nearly three years after stints at AOL and IAC.

We can’t say that’s a terrible move, given Smith’s track record, but it’s by no means a given that Coleman can go much further selling HuffPo’s notoriously sketchy pageviews.