Chas Edwards
(Credit: Federated Media)The publisher of Federated Media, which sells ads for blogs and social media sites, is leaving to be chief revenue officer at user-based news aggregator Digg.
Chas Edwards, who will officially assume his new role on June 22, had stints in sales and marketing at CNET and TechTV before co-founding Federated Media in 2005 with then-journalist John Battelle of Wired and The Industry Standard renown.
At Digg, Edwards will work on sales and advertising strategy and focus on creating new revenue streams including sponsorships, new ad programs and channels, as well as manage the company's ad relationship with Microsoft, according to a post by Digg Chief Executive Jay Adelson in a company blog post on Friday.
Federated Media used to handle all advertising sales for Digg, but that changed nearly two years ago when Digg switched to Microsoft for display ad sales. Federated Media still handles sponsorships on Digg.
"Maybe it's time to spark up that Digg-FM partnership again!" Edwards wrote in a post on his personal blog. "In the meantime, FM runs in my blood. To my friends at FM: See you at Red's Javahouse and Sala NYC soon and often. I owe you more than I can ever repay."
Battelle said he "knew this day was coming."
"Chas' tireless work ethic and forward-looking philosophy are embedded in FM's DNA," he wrote in a post on the Federated media blog.
"But at heart, Chas is (a) start-up mountain climber. His skills are unmatched in taking a company from zero to significant revenue. He's done that here and more."
The move comes as Battelle searches for "an additional leader" to run Federated Media and "take the company to the next level."
Federated Media, which raised $50 million from Oak Investment Partners a year ago, laid off 7 of 90 employees in January.
The company serves ads on popular sites like Boing Boing and TechCrunch, but lost its contract with GigaOm last year to a new IDG ad network.
Om Malik, the head of the Giga Omni Media group of tech blogs, said on Friday he is moving his ad business from John Battelle's Federated Media to a new advertising network IDG launched in March.
The companies, which have partnered for three years (and weathered differences of opinion involving a scandal over "conversational marketing" in which the writing of Malik, Battelle, and other bloggers was featured in ads for Microsoft), are splitting amicably. They are characterizing the move as them having grown in different directions, according to Malik and Federated Media Publisher Chas Edwards.
Giga Omni Media's seven Web sites are small vertical sites, which are more suited for a company with a trade publishing background like IDG, Edwards said in an interview.
Meanwhile, "the Federated Media approach is the Conde Nast or Time Inc. approach, (working with) larger brands, fewer of them, and national and global advertisers," he said. "Our model has not been well-suited to take those smaller sites where they wanted to go.
"I think it's actually a wonderful move for Om and, frankly, for Federated Media," Edwards added.
In a blog posting, Malik explained the situation like this:
"Progress is often accompanied by a divergence of ideas and ambitions within partnerships. At Giga Omni Media, we have been developing a network that revolves around niche verticals. As our needs became more specialized, we sat down with the folks at Federated to try and figure out how we could continue to work together. But both sides quickly realized that instead it was time to wrap up what has been a successful business relationship."
The situation is completely different from the circumstances that led to news aggregator Digg to switch from Federated Media to Microsoft for its advertising last year. While Microsoft serves up the contextual and display ads on Digg, Federated Media handles the sponsorships, including some banner ads, Edwards said.
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