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AOL makes bold strides in advertising revenue with programmatic trading

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Though it might have been overtaken by Google as the most visible name in online industry many years ago, AOL (America Online) is still going strong and has recently posted 4th quarter figures for 2013 that point to its most successful year in over a decade. The recent up-shoot in the company's fortunes can largely be attributed to the rise in video, mobile and programmatic trading, factors which have given the company a total revenue growth of 13% with global advertising revenue also rising by 23%. There was also a whopping 63% growth in 3rd party network revenue and a gain in global display revenue of 7%.

The company did however experience a global search revenue decrease of 2%, which was a knock-on effect from the general decrease in AOL subscribers. This also led to a 10% decline in AOL subscription revenue. But as the company looks to expand with the sale of premium formats and the acquisition of numerous creative firms and platforms, these negative figures appear to matter less. AOL CEO and chairman Tim Armstrong doesn't seem worried, as he says “2013 was AOL's most successful year in the last decade,” with a solid accomplishment of their goal, which was “Industry level growth at scale for AOL”. He went on to congratulate the company's “Exceptionally talented team, who continue to make meaningful progress in the most important areas of media and technology”.

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AOL CEO and chairman Tim Armstrong

Increases in the popularity of programmatic trading have been a serious boom to the company, who purchased the programmatic video advertising platform 'Adap.tv' in August of last year for $405 million. Adap.tv is a video advertising technology firm that uses its own bespoke 'Pathway' platform to help sell video advertising to most of the world's top agencies, brands and publishers. This acquisition alone has brought AOL's third party network revenue up from what would have been 20% to the staggering aforementioned 63%, and 'Adap.tv' is not the only acquisition AOL have made recently. Just this month, the company spent $90 million on the multi-screen content optimisation and personalisation startup firm, Gravity. Gravity was founded in 2009 by Amit Kapur, Steve Pearman and Jim Benedetto that tracks millions of data points within an interest graph, this should help the business improve how they track and utilise their users preferences, interests and habits.

These acquisitions (along with the company's renewed focus) should mean the revenue gains in 2014 will be even greater!

Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance copywriter who has been with AOL since he took his first tentative steps onto the internet back in 2001.

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