Yahoo acquired the 80 percent of online-advertising exchange Right Media it didn't already own for $680 million in 2007 — a jawdroppingly high sum which made former Right Media executive Brian O'Kelley giggle, since Yahoo had bought the first 20 percent at a $200 million valuation only months before.

If Yahoo executives think they overpaid, no one's holding it against Walrath. The acquisition is the centerpiece of Yahoo's strategy to turn the company into a central place for buying online advertising. Transforming Yahoo's ad-selling operations from a conventional salesforce which sold ads on Yahoo's websites to a marketplace where banners are traded like bushels of corn has been a particular obsession of Decker's.

Adman Scott Symonds, whose employer, whose AKQA agency brings clients to Yahoo's advertising, told us he hopes the rumor of Walrath's promotion is true: "Yahoo has made some integration moves, but I think Yahoo can be even more aggressive leveraging these network properties and exchanges they purchased." One Yahoo speculates that Walrath's move to headquarters could be bad news for Mark Morrissey, another SVP in charge of advertising product management. Judging by how Walrath coolly handles a dancing, singing, rapping man in a chicken suit in the video embedded below, he's well prepared for life at 701 1st Ave, Sunnyvale, Calif.:

Before he left, Pann rewarded his team for all of Panama's renowned successes with promotions for one and all. Now Morrissey is stuck with power-tripping incompetents, our tipster suggests, who "rarely spoke to any customer during Panama and caused disaster."