AOL President expected to depart next year

AOL president Bob Lord plans to leave the online media company early next year.

Current AOL CEO Tim Armstrong had groomed Lord as a successor, but now will remain for several more years in the wake of Verizon’s $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL in May. Armstrong told The Wall Street Journal that he would assist Lord in his search for a public company to run.

“That’s my sweet spot,” Lord said in an interview with the Journal. “That’s what I really want to do. I haven’t gone out in the market and looked yet. Right now, I’m committed to making sure things are tied up at AOL.”

Lord does not have a departure date and will likely stay at AOL into 2016, Armstrong told the Journal. He said there are currently no plans to find a successor for Lord.

Lord helped establish AOL’s online advertising prowess, the main attractor for Verizon’s purchase. Before joining AOL in 2013, Lord spent more than 12 years at digital marketing agency Razorfish where he became global CEO and CEO of Paris-based marketing and communications firm Publicis Groupe’s Digital Technology Division, which eventually included Razorfish and other units.

While at Razorfish, Lord co-authored the book Converge: Transforming Businesses at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology (2013), with Razorfish CTO Ray Velez.

In 2013, Lord became CEO of AOL Platforms and in January 2015, became president of AOL, overseeing its unified global advertising operations. "AOL sits at the intersection of technology and marketing, powering platforms that over 2500 brands and agencies and over 40,000 publishers rely on to drive convergence," he writes on his LinkedIn profile.

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