Why I’m Bullish on AOL

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On last Friday’s “Paying for Performance” podcast, Jeff Molander remarked that I’m rather bullish on AOL’s position in the online advertising market. I think with new president Lynda Clarizio in place, my optimism about them be proven true…

AOL Highlights Platform-A Integration Focus With Unified Search Marketing Services | paidContent.org: “AOL announced that Platform-A has combined contextual ad targeter Quigo’s FeedPoint search marketing tool with Advertising.com’s OutSearch data analysis product.

Secondly, the combination of the OutSearch’s “bid management solutions” for buying keywords and FeedPoint’s analytic tools, also highlights another recent area AOL hopes to be more active in: ecommerce. In February, AOL acquired UK-based affiliate marketing network Buy.at, which was intended to round out Platform-A’s ad network offerings with online sales and performance-based marketing solutions.

AOL has a tremendous amount of potential due to its reach into the global performance and display ad business, which is where Google is lacking (hence the DoubleClick acquisition). Add to that the existing long-term relationships that AOL has with global brands with deep pockets looking for more responsive and performance-based advertising, and AOL’s future looks bright.

It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of AOL from darling in the 90’s to pariah in the early ’00’s into global advertising powerhouse in the late ’00’s into the ’10’s. Keep your eye on AOL and its subsidiaries.

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