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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

AOL’s BlackVoices launches BV Power List

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BlackVoices has launched BV Power List, a new blog that provides men with tips on how to succeed at work, home and play in order to make their own power moves in their daily life. A key feature of the new blog is the editors’ weekly pick of the top five industry leading African-American influencers. The first BV Power List consists of Barack Obama, Tyra Banks, Tyler Perry, Magic Johnson and Mellody Hobson.

“At a time when we could be electing our first African-American President, we felt it was important to bring attention to other influential people of color from across America’s most dynamic industries,” said BlackVoices’ Director Tariq Muhammad. “We feel our first five Power List members really represent the leadership within the black community.”

Originally posted on November 4, 2008 @ 9:50 am

Platform-A goes on tour

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Platform-A is taking AOL’s programming on tour to showcase its network of web properties and new niche sites to advertisers and agencies. The tour aims to underscore how Platform-A can leverage AOL’s sites to strengthen an advertiser’s brand and generate revenue. The roadshow, titled “The Wider Web: Achieving Growth in a Fragmented Market,” previewed in Dallas on November 5, is making its national debut in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History on November 17th, and will be followed by an event in Atlanta on November 20. Other events will take place in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in early 2009.

“AOL has one of the largest, most diverse and most engaged audiences on the Web, and combined with Platform-A’s industry-leading technologies, we can offer advertisers a unique combination of scale, integrated branding, and advanced targeting capabilities to enable them to deliver their branding messages in an effective, engaging and highly efficient way,” said Platform-A President Lynda Clarizio. “At a time when companies make sure that every penny spent on advertising counts, AOL delivers quality content and engaged consumers and Platform-A connects marketers to this audience to drive superior results.”

To date, Platform-A has fully integrated its sales forces, and developed one insertion order and other processes to streamline ad buying. In addition, Platform-A has accelerated its product development efforts with recent launches including Spot Marketplace, enabling advertisers to bid on nonreserved inventory across AOL’s Web sites; PubAccess, a self-service interface enabling Web sites to place their inventory for sale in Platform-A’s third party display network; audience targeting across Platform-A; and the creation of a 300 x 600 ad unit across AOL’s homepages and co-branded sites.

Each roadshow will provide advertisers and agencies with an in-depth look at AOL’s programming, and the opportunities they offer to reach targeted, highly desirable audiences, leveraging Platform-A’s industry-leading tools and technologies.

Originally posted on November 2, 2008 @ 11:20 am

AOL launches When.com online event guide

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AOL announced the launch of when.com, a new hyper-local online event guide that enables users to search and browse for a wide range of events in their local area, including kids and family activities, community events, live performances, sporting events and many others.

Each event listing includes detailed information, reviews, maps and directions from MapQuest, and when applicable, links to purchase tickets. Users can also easily bookmark events or add them to their AOL, Google, Outlook or Yahoo Calendar.

Events on when.com are searchable by time (today, tomorrow, next seven days, etc.), type (Arts and Crafts, Community, Dance, etc.) and by geographic area. Users can easily browse through events by using navigation tabs along the top and left-hand side of the page, or search for events by using the convenient search box at the top of the page.

In the coming weeks, additional when.com features will be rolled out including a when.com widget that can be added to any social networking page and a new “MyWhen” feature that will enable users to save events to their own when.com calendar and receive alerts and reminders for upcoming events. In addition, content from when.com will be integrated across MapQuest Local, AOL CityGuide, AOL Travel and other AOL websites.

When.com is powered by Zvents, a local search engine powering a network of hundreds of Web and mobile partners, featuring event listings to promote local businesses.

Originally posted on November 3, 2008 @ 2:38 pm