AOL will shell out $405 million for Adap.tv, as we reported this morning. That’s a lot of scratch for an ad-tech company – or any company, for that matter. While M&A comparisons are only useful up to a point, it might be instructive to consider the video-ad platform in light of other few recent deals […]
Aside from the big news that AOL was acquiring video-ad marketplace Adap.tv to further its programmatic goals, the portal reported its Q2 earnings, which showed continued strides on its display business. While the single-digit gains made during the period may not seem too exciting, they do compare favorably with the recent earnings from Yahoo and […]
AOL has agreed to buy video-ad company Adap.tv in a deal that will add another arrow to the programmatic quiver, with products facing both the buy and sell side. Adap.tv is one of a handful of mature companies, alongside YuMe, Tremor Video and TubeMogul, that are seizing the digital video opportunity. Its revenue growth has […]
Video is a big part of AOL’s new plans to stage a “programmatic upfront” in the fall (AdExchanger story) and content discovery and distribution platform Taboola is likely to be a big part of that effort. The two companies signed a deal late last month that starts with AOL posts adding Taboola’s “recommendation matrix” of […]
Barely two months after promoting its video content among the various other digital NewFront presentations, AOL is now planning a “Programmatic Upfront” for September. As we reported earlier today, CEO Tim Armstrong wants to position AOL as the antidote to the long chain of ad technology vendors that serve as the pipes connecting marketers’ online […]
Flexing his salesmanship skills, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced to a group of reporters last night in New York City that his company would undertake its “first ever Programmatic Upfront event” on September 23, which is to coincide with the beginning of Advertising Week festivities in New York. Seated to Armstrong’s left during the announcement […]
The growing demand for personalized, “real-time marketing” (think: the doings of Oreo and its digital agency 360i that resulted in “Dunk in the Dark” during the Super Bowl), is one of the forces underpinning the push toward unifying the “human” and “technological” elements of the programmatic equation. AOL’s earlier announcement of a new strategic partnership […]
Bob Lord is leaving his twin posts as Global CEO of Razorfish and CEO of Publicis Groupe’s Digital Technologies Division to take on the role of CEO of AOL Networks, a post that has been vacant since April when former head Ned Brody exited in April for Yahoo, pending his non-compete. However, Lord, who joined […]
After stints running TV media sales software INVISION and heading corporate development for ad exchange operator AppNexus, former AOL executive Lynda Clarizio is joining investment bank Berenson & Co. to help expand its digital media dealmaking portfolio. Read the release. The post puts Clarizio on the other side of the M&A table from her early […]
Aol wants to be the “new TV.” During its lavish NewFront presentation last month, it pressed the message “We’re ready for primetime” – that is, primetime TV ad spending. Today the company released a survey of 770 ad industry executives on the migration of TV spend to digital video. Respondents indicated plans to shift spend […]
There’s been no shortage of talk about “programmatic direct,” which involves using automated buying tools to support negotiated ad deals with presumably branding-oriented campaign goals. But for Priceline.com CMO Brett Keller, the idea is an illusion. “We’ve been using TV as our branding vehicle from very the beginning of this company 14 years ago and […]
David Bell, the chairman emeritus for Interpublic Group, offered his take on some barriers to growth in digital advertising today at Aol’s Thought Leadership Summit on programmatic advertising. Number one on his hit list was the clutter of ad tech startups. He also took aim at the power wielded by procurement officers and bashed the ad industry for […]
Aol was able to maintain its hard-won profitability and ad sales gains Q1. But just as Aol was finally able to turn US display around with a decent growth of 6%, the usual powerhouse of third-party network revenues showed signs of slowing down. Read the earnings release. The company’s third-party network revenues growth slowed to […]
For all the glitz and glamour that surrounded Aol’s Newfronts programming preview on Tuesday, perhaps the most relevant news for advertisers came at the end of the showcase with a mention of the unsexiest of topics: back-office operations designed to support the thousands of hours of digital video, along with analytics. Following appearances by actors […]
“I hear people say I can buy premium video content wherever I want. Then at the other end, I hear people say there’s not enough. And they say that they can’t even buy data on top of it, because the minute you apply data to premium, the cake becomes smaller and smaller. This is why […]
On paper, the combination of Henrique de Castro, Yahoo’s chief operating officer, Brian Silver, the former Travel Ad Network CEO who became Yahoo’s VP of ad platforms over a year ago, and AOL Networks CEO Ned Brody — who just resigned from that post — as head of ad sales for Yahoo North America, sounds perfect. […]
For the past year, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has emphasized the company’s position as a programmatic player, discussing the importance of its “tech stack” and building up its year-old demand-side platform AdLearn. The company hopes to complete the circle around its automated ad services with the launch of its long-promised supply side platform, dubbed simply […]
AOL’s mix of challenges and improvements to its ad business was clearly represented in its Q4 earnings last Friday. U.S. display revenues slipped 3%, dampening AOL’s triumphal announcement that companywide revenues returned to the plus side after eight long years. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong surveyed the company’s Q4 earnings in an interview on Friday, conceding […]
AOL’s Q4 results had a number of positives, not least of which was a return to overall revenue growth for the first time in eight long years. And yet, Q4 saw the company’s display ad dollars slip further, with numbers in that segment flat globally and down 3% in the U.S. Read the release. For […]
Just days before AOL reports its heavily scrutinized Q4 earnings, the company has rebranded the unit housing its Advertising.com flagship as AOL Networks. The purpose is to streamline AOL’s message to agencies, advertisers, marketers, publishers and investors and convey that the company is a programmatic player, not a vestigial ad network with a farrago of […]
As AOL and Yahoo struggle to keep pace with display ad gains from Google, Facebook and Amazon, the portals have placed much of their hopes on lucrative brand campaign-friendly homepage ads. Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter has been charting the progress of the portals’ homepage ad quality and quantity, and it looks like Q4 was a […]
AOL has been promising a bigger effort on the programmatic side of the business all year and the company is ending 2012 with an acquisition that’s intended to both reflect and build on that focus. The company being acquired is Buysight, a retargeting and retail lead gen specialist. The four-year-old company will be folded into […]
AOL’s display performance is in comeback mode, but growth is lopsided. The company’s Q3 earnings presented a clear demonstration of the strength of third party network, which includes the flagship ad unit Advertising.com, as revenues jumped 18 percent over the same period in 2011. At the same time, revenue from AOL’s owned & operated sites […]
Last month’s ad spending tally from the Interactive Advertising Bureau was another “record-breaker,” as marketers lavished $17 billion on web ads between January and the end of June 2012. Display revenues in the first half totaled almost $5.6 billion, up 4 percent from $5.3 billion in the first half of 2011. So everything should be […]
While AOL’s Q3 growth was surely a welcome sign to patient investors, the fact that it has continued to come from its third party network and search ad deal with Google could be a long term problem. During a call with analysts, CEO Tim Armstrong acknowledged several times that the “traditional” display model of ad […]
AOL opened up its presence for this year’s Advertising Week by giving its “premium, brand-focused” Project Devil ads something of an upgrade. Although not greeted with the same kind of anticipation that is associated with the latest iPhone version, Project Devil is as crucial to AOL’s revenue generation as the smartphone is to Apple’s. For […]
In Q2, as it has for the past year, AOL’s third party network revenue rose by double digits, while U.S. display dollars remained flat. Read the earnings release. During the earnings call with investors, who once again saw their low expectations exceeded by AOL’s performance, CEO Tim Armstrong batted back questions about the advertising challenge […]
Despite AOL’s efforts to build up its owned & operated sites, including the Huffington Post Media Group its local content offering Patch, the portal’s real growth has always come from its Advertising.com ad network. So it wasn’t too much of a surprise when AOL announced a few executive shifts that are designed to highlight the […]
AOL’s slight stumble on display ad sales in Q1 was due to “distractions” the company experienced in Q4, as the company continued to refine its content strategy and place the Huffington Post brand on top of its content offerings and the company continued to refine its content and sales strategies. CEO Tim Armstrong told AdExchanger following […]
The buildup around the online advertising “NewFront” presentations this week from Microsoft, Yahoo, Digitas and others are meant to appear similar to the annual TV upfront extravaganzas, AOL appeared to take the notion as seriously as possible. At a rented studio on Manhattan’s west side, the company unveiled a presentation that makes AOL’s content offerings […]
