WebProNews

It would be an understatement to say that Yahoo's experienced a rough patch recently, and Microsoft, with Bing launched and a search deal on the way, seems to be doing better.  But Yahoo may still have a few tricks up its sleeve, and the company pulled off one by getting a Microsoft sales exec to join its ranks.

This morning, Kara Swisher described Seth Dallaire as one of Microsoft's top ad sales execs, and then wrote, "Yahoo confirmed that Dallaire joined the company last week, as VP of mid-market sales, a newly-created role responsible for all mid-market sales efforts across search and display advertising."

Dallaire looks to be a good catch.  In fact, he worked for Microsoft for about seven years, and so should have a great idea of how its ad business operates.  Another important detail is that he spent a couple of years at Amazon working as a senior account manager.

Dallaire was educated at Vassar College and New York University, too, which isn't a bad combo.

Anyway, it's more than a little interesting to see someone move from Microsoft to Yahoo instead of the other way around.  Maybe Yahoo just offered Dallaire one or more parts of the usual better pay/better benefits/better hours package, or maybe - big, bleed-purple, cross-your-fingers maybe - this corresponds to the start of a turnaround.