If Verizon closes its $4.4 billion AOL acquisition, it will mark one more marriage between a telco and an ad tech company. It’s also a harbinger of more to come. Last summer, Australian telco Telstra grabbed a majority stake into streaming video distribution platform Ooyala and then bought video supply-side platform Videoplaza. In 2012, Singapore […]
Mobile is big and video is big – and putting the two together presents a gargantuan advertising opportunity that Verizon will be primed to capture if it closes on AOL. “Verizon has been trying to figure out how to grab a bigger share of the ad tech pie, so the move makes sense strategically on […]
As the media and tech worlds absorb news of Verizon’s planned acquisition of AOL, the largest unanswered question revolves around the fate of The Huffington Post Media Group, a unit that includes the eponymous publication as well as TechCrunch, Engadget and others. While Re/code’s Kara Swisher reported “advanced discussions” for AOL to sell its flagship media […]
Kelly Liyakasa contributed. Verizon will acquire digital media and ad tech platform company AOL in a cash transaction valued at $4.4 billion. The deal vaults the telecommunications company into the media and ad tech sectors and gives it a “three screen” relationship with consumers across desktop, mobile, and television. “It’s really one of the moments in time where […]
AOL reported revenue growth of 7% YoY in the first quarter, for a total of $625 million. Global advertising revenue, which includes AOL’s own properties, search and third-party platforms, climbed 12% YoY to $483 million. Read the earnings release. CEO Tim Armstrong said the company continues to make updates “placing AOL at the center of […]
Fifty-four stories above New York’s World Trade Center site, 800 media planners gathered Tuesday evening for AOL’s annual advertiser NewFront. The big “reveal” was a new video content and distribution agreement with broadcaster NBCUniversal. Starting this summer, select NBCUniversal videos from network partners Bravo, CNBC, E!, MSNBC, NBC, Oxygen, Syfy, Telemundo and USA will be […]
Consider it AOL ONE’s coming-out party. A year after AOL first outlined a vision to unify its programmatic technologies for both advertisers and publishers under a single platform, Tuesday marks the day the product officially ships. AOL has also renamed each of its technologies to more accurately reflect their capabilities. For instance, Adap.tv is now […]
FOX Sports wants to bring its content to where users watch it. AOL wants more video content. Deal. It was in that team spirit that the two companies revealed Wednesday a syndication partnership that would bring FOX Sports content to AOL properties. “AOL really fits in with our off-network digital strategy,” said Ben Maggin, VP […]
AOL is building on its foray into long-form content, which it first announced at last year’s newfronts, by distributing the pilot of its documentary series, “Connected,” on Roku devices. Although AOL Video has content distribution agreements with 17 different Internet-streaming and over-the-top devices, including Amazon Fire and Chromecast, “Connected” – produced by Morgan Spurlock and […]
Video and cross-screen private marketplaces (PMPs) are all the rage, though their strategic uses differ from publisher to publisher. AOL’s newest PMP partner, Rev4 Media, wanted to take advantage of the silver screen and the associated second-screen opportunity for mobile app developers. It’s in the process of building a PMP using AOL’s technology. Rev4 Media […]
AOL’s programmatic revenue grew 250% in the fourth quarter, and now accounts for 39% of AOL’s non-search revenue. In Q4 the company “integrated the first set of private marketplaces,” Armstrong said, for a total of 15 private marketplaces. AOL’s shift to programmatic led to a recent restructuring of its sales force, another area of heightened attention from investors. AOL recently […]
AOL took its first step toward becoming a “video-led content company” with the launch of AOL Rise, a morning show formatted as two-minute clips tailored for mobile devices, said Dermot McCormack, president of AOL video and studios. AOL hopes people will watch AOL Rise instead of browsing the web or tuning into televised morning shows when […]
A year after AOL acquired Gravity, AOL-owned publication The Huffington Post has standardized the content personalization tool to power internal and external content recommendation links. This means it’s history for Taboola, HuffPost’s previous recommendation module. Gravity has powered the publisher’s “Suggested For You” internal module for the past six months, and it replaced the Taboola-powered external module […]
If banner advertising has peaked, native advertising is still on its way up. Proponents of native cite better consumer engagement and higher rates for publishers. London-based market research firm Mintel pegged the current native advertising market at $1.8 billion, predicting it will rise to $9.4 billion by 2018. Of course, “native” is a broad term […]
If data is currency, then it’s no wonder most companies lock it in a safe (unless you’re Sony Pictures Entertainment, in which case you just put it on a Word document somewhere). But this can be a tremendous point of frustration for brands that want to use the data housed by the big dogs of […]
Is a Facebook video impression worth the same as in video-on-demand? This was one of many questions posed to YouTube and Facebook reps during Tuesday’s TV Of Tomorrow Show in New York. Patrick Harris, Facebook’s director of global agency development, argued that “the CMOs we serve are not thinking about the value of specific impressions. […]
CEO Tim Armstrong thinks AOL’s bets on programmatic are paying off. Programmatic grew to 37% of non-search ad revenue, compared to 12%. Forty seven percent of revenue from AOL’s network Advertising.com was programmatic, compared to 18% during the same period last year. Advertising revenue grew 18% YoY to $473.4 million. Armstrong attributed the increase to larger shifts in the […]
A change is on the horizon for Annalect, Omnicom’s analytics and marketing technology arm. Omnicom agencies – both its media traders and its creative firms – use Annalect when they need data-driven expertise for their clients’ campaigns. As such, Annalect has a wealth of data scientists and technologists, 250 relationships with third-party data sources and a […]
AOL on Tuesday appointed Dermot McCormack president of AOL Video and AOL Studios, its original content production arm. McCormack, formerly Viacom’s head of connected content, will replace Ran Harnevo, a key player in the development of premium online video content network AOL On, who is pursuing “other opportunities.” McCormack’s appointment comes at a pivotal period […]
If AOL hadn’t already made it clear it would double down on digital video and end-to-end marketing tech at its Digital Newfront in May, Monday’s Programmatic Upfront at Advertising Week in New York left no doubt. AOL’s latest development? The company has layered in and built a data-management platform (DMP) out of attribution vendor Convertro, which it purchased […]
While AOL and Publicis Groupe have been programmatic cohorts since last July, the media giant and the holding company took their partnership to another level by adding video and linear TV to the mix Monday at Advertising Week. The move will link Publicis’ digital arm VivaKi with AOL Platforms, which will become Publicis’ preferred partner for programmatic video. […]
Do open auctions have a future? It depends which publisher you ask. According to executives from Meredith, Yahoo and AOL, who spoke at the Programmatic I/O Conference on Wednesday, change is coming. “It won’t live on” in its current form, said Meredith’s VP of programmatic sales and strategy, Chip Schenck. “Because it’s used and thought […]
AOL added another premium ad format to its programmatic offerings on Monday. A full-page mobile ad, the Road Devil Interstitial for Mobile, is part of an effort to add more premium, brand-friendly units to its programmatic inventory. The unit offers brands the ability to display a store locator, bring in recent tweets or play a video […]
AOL is both a technology company and a publisher, a fact that works in Gravity’s favor. Acquired by AOL in January, Gravity’s 45-person team is a part of AOL’s 4,800-strong workforce and its content personalization engine now powers internal links to AOL’s content repository, which sees 4,000 to 5,000 new articles every day. Gravity’s engine […]
“Programmatic ads grew at over 100% year-over-year, and we’re growing faster than the programmatic field overall,” AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told investors looking over the company’s second-quarter results. “Programmatic [ad revenue] has grown from 5% to 34% of our business in a year, which is part of a large industry shift and the biggest shift […]
The strategic deal struck Monday between AOL Platforms and French agency Havas’ programmatic trading desk Affiperf benefits both parties: AOL Platforms gets sell-in with Havas’ clients and Havas can unify media assets for marketers in a central hub – ONE By AOL. This is AOL’s second major agency deal since March, when it debuted ONE […]
Following its glitzy, star-studded digital NewFront in April, AOL got down to business. It closed in on marketing attribution vendor Convertro the same day Google grabbed pure-play competitor Adometry in early May. Then it went shopping again, snapping up TV audience-targeting platform PrecisionDemand. AOL’s acquisitive behavior is not entirely surprising. The company is constructing an […]
Is Bitly quietly becoming a platform company? The link cruncher rolled out Tuesday the Bitly Certified Partner Program with inaugural partners Percolate, Spredfast, Buffer, Sprinklr, IFTTT, Dynamic Signal and EveryoneSocial. “We’re focused on platform integrations to support owned, earned and paid campaigns with Bitly’s tools and audience data,” said Jennifer Hanser, the company’s newly-hired senior […]
Reaching the holy grail of real-time, one-to-one interaction may sound like a marketer’s utopia, but a number of execs gathered Thursday at a Thought Leadership Summit hosted by AOL felt this importance was overstated. In some instances, real-time processes aren’t the be-all and end-all. “I think real-time (marketing) is only a part of a bigger […]
AOL’s Adap.tv will acquire Jon Mandel’s PrecisionDemand, a TV ad-targeting company that mines set-top box data and layers it with first-party data. In a Wednesday blog post outlining the acquisition, Adap.tv’s Toby Gabriner wrote: “Integrated into Adap.tv’s programmatic buying and selling platforms and, eventually, ONE by AOL, PrecisionDemand will be a key component of our […]
