NEW YORK, NY, JULY 8, 2009 – AOL appointed Kate Burns as head of its European Sales, responsible for expanding ad sales on AOL’s owned and operated properties in Europe, scaling its Advertising.com third-party network, and delivering unmatched consumer insights. Burns was previously Vice President and Managing Director, Europe, of AOL’s social media company, Bebo. In her new role, Burns will report directly to AOL Global Advertising and Strategy President Jeff Levick.

“Europe is key to realizing our mission of being the largest global platform for online display advertising.  Kate is the right person to build our European management sales team and lead this effort,” said Levick. “Kate is a well recognized and highly respected leader in Europe who has the talent, energy and determination to scale our European operations and deliver on this strategy.”

“AOL has a solid foundation in Europe, with a strong Web presence in many countries and a leading advertising network, and I’m looking forward to working with my colleagues and with AOL’s partners to build on this foundation,” said Burns.

Burns has more than a decade’s experience launching and leading several businesses to success in Europe. Before joining Bebo in July 2008, Burns was Managing Director of Dailymotion UK, where she was responsible for growing its audience, building an advertising sales operation and creating commercial partnerships with brands and ad agencies. Burns was also Director, UK, Ireland and Benelux at Google, which she joined in 2001 as its first employee outside the U.S., and where she led Google to strong international success. She has also held key sales positions at Altavista and Doubleclick, as well as Ziff Davis and News International.

AOL has advertising operations in nine countries across Europe, including Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. AOL’s advertising network had more than 173 million UVs in Europe in May, according to comScore Media Metrix making it the second largest ad network in Europe.

About AOL
AOL is a global Web services company that operates some of the most popular Web destinations, offers a comprehensive suite of free software and services, runs one of the largest Internet access businesses in the U.S., and provides a full set of advertising solutions. A majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., AOL and its subsidiaries have operations in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. Learn more at AOL.com.