TV ad firm regroups under new management. (Media & Technology).

After a tumultuous year that saw most of its top management leave and advertising sales slump, Adlink Cable Advertising LLC is in recovery mode.

The Los Angeles firm, owned by local cable operators that dedicate one-third of their ad slots to the company, is on pace for a better than 40 percent revenue jump in the fourth quarter from a year ago, said the company's new chief executive, Bob McCauley.

For the year, Adlink is expected to reach $120 million in revenues, a 9 percent jump from 2001 when a depressed national advertising market sent revenues tumbling to $109 million.

McCauley replaced Charles Thurston, the former chief executive, who resigned in May to become head of national sales with Comcast Corp. in Philadelphia.

Eight other managers also left, including former Executive Vice President Vicki Lins, as well as Adlink's chief financial officer, its chief technological officer and its vice president of marketing and communication.

Many of those who left, including Lins, joined Thurston at Philadelphia-based Comcast.

McCauley, hired in April, said turnover was spurred primarily by loyalty to Thurston. He characterized the management changes as a "friendly takeover."

"You name it, we lost it," said McCauley, who left his post as general sales manager of Fox's two local television stations, KCOP-TV (Channel 13) and KTTV-TV (Channel 11), to take the Adlink job. "The thing that's been the saving grace is the top executives had set up the company but they were not really running the day-to-day. They left a middle-management team who were basically running the business."

McCauley got off to an awkward start at Adlink when Fox sued him for breach of contract. McCauley, who said the suit has been settled, resigned right before May sweeps.

Adlink is owned outright or by subsidiaries of the major local cable operators: Adelphia Communications Corp., Charter Communications Inc., Cox Cable Communications, AT&T Corp. and AOL Time Warner. Unlike other local ad buyers, Adlink operates as the city's "interconnect," a network that allows advertisers to run commercials across the local cable landscape with a single buy.

The company places ads on 44 channels carried by local operators and packages advertising buys in half a dozen "clusters" are organized by grouping stations with similar demographics. For example, ESPN and the Fox Sports networks are sold as part of a single package.

Adlink also has developed proprietary technologies that allow it to more narrowly target advertisements. Using Adlink's "Adcopy" program, for example, an automobile manufacturer could simultaneously run a spot for a minivan in Monrovia and a sports car in Malibu.

Adlink has been aggressively marketing the service, most recently to political campaigns. This election season, Gov. Gray Davis used Adcopy to send different messages to different constituencies in the Los Angeles area, said Ondine Fortune, whose Newport Beach-based Fortune Media & Consulting worked with LUC Media on Davis' cable strategy. "This has been going on a while but they are bringing it to the forefront and using to the best advantage' said Fortune.

Adlink has begun licensing the technology to other "interconnects" in other parts of the country. The licensing is not expected to generate much revenue on its own, McCauley said, but it will draw more dollars from national advertisers by allowing them to sell targeted ads across linked markets nationwide.