Todd Sawicki

The I Can Has Cheezburger empire has a new name and a new chief revenue officer to help make money off all of those quirky cat photos and funny failure videos. The Seattle online network of comedy Web sites, formerly known as Pet Holdings, has changed its name to the Cheezburger Network. It also has tapped Todd Sawicki -- the former director of marketing at Lookery, Loudeye and Zango -- as chief revenue officer.

The appointment of Sawicki -- a well known fixture in the Seattle tech community who has advised a number of Internet startups over the years -- comes amid some impressive growth. I Can Has Cheezburger -- the flagship Web property of the profitable company -- recently surpassed one billion page views. That milestone was reached in just 33 months.

Meanwhile, the network as a whole -- which consists of more than 30 Web sites including I Has a Hotdog, GraphJam and FailBlog -- is now attracting 11 million unique visitors and 200 million page views per month. The company's fans upload more than 10,000 photos and videos every day, making it one of the biggest online networks leveraging user-created content.

That provides a lot of opportunity for Sawicki, who called the Cheezburger Network a "highly promising company that is strongly positioned to become the king of this new media."

In fact, the company has been branching off in creative ways, most recently through book publishing. (The company's recently released book "How to Take Over Teh Wurld: A LOLCat Guide 2 Winning" is already a New York Times best seller.

It also recently inked an advertising partnership with Dogster, with Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh saying they are now looking to do similar deals. In a press release, Huh said the company is looking to "build new advertising and monetization programs that leverage our deeply engaged community in unique and organic ways.”

That job will now fall to Sawicki.

UPDATE: I followed up with Sawicki to get a little more detail on his new job, and how he stumbled into the opportunity. Sawicki met Ben Huh at Gnomedex in 2008 and started discussing ways for the company to enhance advertising revenue.

Then, after Sawicki's last startup, Lookery, hit the wall, the job discussions got a little more serious. Sawicki is thrilled to be on board, and said he sees three main ways to boost revenue at the company:

1.) Moving away from the traditional ad networks into premium advertising partnerships (The Dogster deal, which Sawicki helped broker, was one of his first).

2.) Finding ways for users to pay Cheezburger directly or as I call it direct user monetization.

3.) Increased licensing and services - growing the book deals, other deals with other traditional media companies as well as new media opportunities in games, mobile apps and other areas.

"Ultimately if I am successful, the company's revenues will not only grow dramatically but the proportion of revenue from advertising will go from the vast majority of the company's revenue to substantially less then that with the other areas being material and substantial," said Sawicki. "You can only run so many ads on a site so a ton more ads isn't a viable option. But given the incredible level of engagement of Cheezburger's audience and fans I think we have the opportunity to over programs, events and services that allow us to continue to be profitable while growing the company in a way that fans will be happy to participate."

Sawicki notes that recent Cheezburger night at The Seattle Mariners baseball game this past summer (where 1,300 people showed up) as an example of a creative way to monetize the business.