Paul Levine to Leave Yahoo! (Local)

I met briefly with Yahoo! today. Paul Levine, stalwart GM of local is leaving after almost five years at the helm. He’s being replaced by Jennifer Dulski, who is now going to be Group Vice President & General Manager, Marketplace. Her title reflects a strategy shift and will combine Local with Shopping, Travel, Autos and Real Estate and represents a more integrated local-vertical approach.

Dulski has a long history at Yahoo! in various roles. I met her and she’s very competent and smart. Prior to her current role, Dulski was the VP/GM of the Autos business.

According to Yahoo!:

Dulski has held a variety of roles during the past nine years. In 2002, she was the visionary behind the “Biggest Sale in Internet History,” a first-of-its-kind online shopping event that created sales lifts for retailers of up to 500%. In 2003, she was a key member of the tiger team that re-launched Yahoo! Search and she led the consumer and influencer marketing strategy behind that successful re-launch, growing Yahoo! Search market share by nearly 2 points.

From Yahoo!, some of Paul’s group’s accomplishments in local during his tenure:

• Built Yahoo! Local from scratch, growing its audience to 15 million monthly unique users since original launch in 2004
• Grew revenue at a 60% annual rate by increasing user engagement and revenue yield
• Developed a comprehensive local channel partner program, including a deep and enduring partnership with AT&T’s Yellowpages.com
• Launched community platforms – like ratings/reviews, merchant-submit, user corrections, and photo upload – that have allowed millions of consumers and hundreds of thousands of merchants to submit their content and opinions into Yahoo! Local
• Led the company’s acquisition and integration of Upcoming.org, which has recently integrated with the Yahoo! network to become Yahoo!’s social events platform
• Enhanced a dozen Yahoo! properties – including Search, Real Estate, Travel, Autos, Personals, Flickr, Movies, etc – by integrating mapping and/or local content

The new more “integrated” thinking behind Dulski’s title/role is right and reflects a broader conceptual understanding of local that is more in alignment with actual consumer behavior and better leverages Yahoo!’s content, partnerships and other assets.