It reunites Pembrooke with former GCap Radio CEO Fru Hazlitt, who has been brought in as MD of both ITV’s commercial and online operations…

Pembrooke had been online director at GCap during Hazlitt’s tenure and through the sale she brokered to Global. He had also been director of Yahoo’s European product operations during Hazlitt’s period as MD of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) UK and Ireland.

Dominic Cameron, who had held the ITV.com MD post since 2008, said in April, during ITV’s strategic review, he was leaving to study at Harvard Business School. And Ben McOwen Wilson, ITV’s head of online generally, is also exiting, leaving Pembrooke reporting to Hazlitt.

It’s a pairing with online track record in a commercial broadcasting context, to drive what must now be a turnaround for an online business new ITV (LSE: ITV) CEO Adam Crozier acknowledges remains “subscale”.

What it means…

The broadcaster has off-loaded its non-core assets like Friends Reunited, Scoot and SDN, effectively shut ITV Local and scaled back original-content production, to concentrate on a smaller-scale site with video (and, so, pre-roll advertising) at its core, preferring drawing audiences to ITV.com than syndicating to aggregators.

Back in 2007, the then consumer MD Jeff Henry set a ridiculous target of making £150 million a year from online by 2010 - then promptly killed ITV’s main online cash cow by switching Friends Reunited from subscriptions to ad support on the cusp of the downturn. The target was abandoned, Henry left and latest earnings show ITV pulled just £12 million from online last year, only £2 million more than the previous year.

New CEO Crozier has pledged a £75 million investment fund “for operating investments online, in content and in our digital channels over the next three years” and - though prior to his arrival - ITV had made big cuts from its IT department, Crozier has hired in BBC Vision’s future media controller Paul Dale as CTO.

It’s with this team, and hopefully stability, that ITV must now put several years of awkward online strategy, chopping and changing behind it to reap what should naturally be a lucrative digital opportunity for Britain’s main commercial broadcaster.

At Global, Pembrooke had to make staff cuts stemming from post-acquisition cutbacks, and has invested plenty in smartphone apps for Global’s radio stations.

Pembrooke’s appointment will be announced later. In later confirmation, Hazlitt spelled out…

“As we progress the transformational change plan, key priorities are to refocus and overhaul the site ensuring that users can quickly and easily engage with our content in a way that is appropriate to the platform.

“ITV.com should be about extending exclusive content, video on demand and monetisation both through the business of advertising and directly from the consumer” (ITV is hoping to augment its ad-funded heritage with viewer micropayments).

“It is also vital that we identify the right distribution strategy for the ITV player and effectively integrate the product where appropriate.”

Does this suggest Hazlitt believes ITV should syndicate its ITV Player content to the likes of Hulu, YouTube, MSN? Former executive chairman Michael Grade once called YouTube a “parasite”, a deal with Hulu came close but is off.