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It’s now 22 months of consecutive growth for AOL

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AOL websites continued to see strong growth in November, extending year-over-year growth in unique visitors to 22 consecutive months, according to the November 2008 comScore Media Metrix report.

Unique visitors to AOL’s programming content sites grew 3% year-over-year to 54 million in November. In addition, page views climbed 66% year-over-year to 3.8 billion and engagement (total minutes) grew 33% year-over-year in November, showing AOL consumers are actively engaging with the sites. Advertising revenues on AOL’s programming sites have had double-digit growth year-over-year in Q3 2008.

In addition, the recently completely redesigned AOL.com, which opened the site to third-party content, e-mail, social networks and more, grew 14% in page views, 13% in unique visitors and 29% in total minutes, year-over-year.

Originally posted on December 16, 2008 @ 10:57 am

AOL launches gaming resource for parents

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AOL announced the launch of PlaySavvy.com, a site that targets parents of children ages 5-17 and helps them decipher the world of games, both PC and console. PlaySavvy also helps parents stay aware of their kids’ entertainment choices including assisting them in making informed decisions about buying games for their children.

The PlaySavvy.com launch is a continuation of AOL’s overall programming goal to offer consumers interactive and engaging experiences with relevant sites that target people’s passion points. This year, AOL launched several targeted sites including ParentDish.com, Lemondrop.com, WalletPop.com, and Holidash.com.

“Playing video games is one of the top pastimes for children these days, almost more than watching TV. We created AOL PlaySavvy to help parents navigate through all the gaming information out there in order to decide what’s appropriate for their children,” said Libe Goad, Editor-in-Chief, AOL PlaySavvy. “In addition, PlaySavvy provides advertisers the opportunity to reach this targeted user base by creating appealing campaigns around the content.”

Originally posted on December 1, 2008 @ 1:56 pm

AOL launches Nice One! to support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

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AOL announced the launch of “Nice One! Stories of Thanks and Giving,” a site that gathers stories of nice things people have done from the world of entertainment, sports and everyday life, and encourages users to submit their own stories. The site, developed in partnership with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, is part of a broad effort by AOL to support the hospital’s fifth annual Thanks and Giving campaign.

Nice One! highlights real-life stories to help promote the spirit of giving during the holiday season, such as the story of a family who tipped their struggling waitress $10,000, and the story of a professional basketball coach who helped a 13 year-old sing the national anthem when she forgot the words. The site also features original content from St. Jude, including patient stories, videos and other resources, as well as information on how to donate directly to St. Jude.

Originally posted on November 19, 2008 @ 9:22 pm

AOL sites hit record traffic for October

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AOL sites hit all-time high traffic numbers and marked the 21st month of consecutive year-over-year growth for unique visitors, according to the October 2008 comScore Media Metrix report.

Unique visitors to AOL’s programming content sites grew 7% year-over-year to 54.3 million in October, and page views more than doubled, up 101% year-over-year to 4.2 billion. Engagement (total minutes) grew 51% year-over-year in October. Total minutes reached an all-time high on AOL.com, growing 27% year-over-year. Additionally, AOL.com page views grew 27%, and unique visitors and total visitors were up 9%, year-over-year, as the site further opened up to third-party content, services and features. In addition, AOL Webmail, reached an all-time high of 3.5 billion page views marking a 31% year-over-year growth.

AOL showed growth in sites that reach men 18-34 such as Asylum, Engadget, FanHouse, and GameDaily, as well as sites that target women 18-54 such as the AOL Living, sites which include Lemondrop, StyleList, ParentDish, Home, and Food.

Now, we will just have to see how this would be translated to earnings.

Originally posted on November 13, 2008 @ 12:25 pm

Platform-A to deliver two-day, billion impression ad campaign for T-Mobile

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AOL’s Platform-A in partnership with T-Mobile USA, launched an unprecedented billion-impression web advertising campaign across Platform-A today and tomorrow. The first-of-its-kind advertising buy underscores Platform-A’s ability to reach more U.S. online consumers than any other online advertising business. Platform-A includes AOL’s owned-and-operated sites, along with the thousands of sites in the Advertising.com third-party network.

Platform-A and T-Mobile collaborated to create the “T-Mobile Billion Block,” the most-expansive two-day ad buy in Platform-A history and will spotlight the T-Mobile G1 with Google, the first Android-powered mobile phone. Over a two-day period, the T-Mobile G1 will dominate a significant amount of AOL and other Platform-A inventory, and it’s estimated that approximately 81.5 million consumers will be exposed to the new phone over the campaign’s 48-hour run.

Originally posted on November 10, 2008 @ 12:46 pm