AOL Officially Turning Into Content Company, To Launch 30 New Sites in 2009
January 12, 2009 |
Today AOL is announcing launch of a specialized business unit, MediaGlow, intended to coordinate all the digital publishing efforts and handle management of existing AOL websites and launch of new ones. We have seen examples of AOL launching various websites and reporting on their successes over 2008 pretty frequently and now AOL reports that publishing has been a very worthwhile field of business for the company overall with 40% growth in page views and audience reaching 70 million users.
Over the past year AOL launched more than a dozen of various content sites while the plans for 2009 are even bigger with over 30 editorial websites planned to be launched this year. I am not sure if the big plans for content business mean any new acquisitions for AOL but chances are we will see at least some blogs and other content-focused websites acquired by AOL as sometimes it is more reasonable to buy a successful project than build a new one from scratch to face competition from the existing players. In addition to that, we should expect to see some international efforts as AOL will be trying to replicate the success in web publishing and advertising globally.
This decision of following the web publishing route must be an indication of the fact that AOL’s advertising business is a pretty healthy one: after launching the Platform A advertising network more than a year ago the company is now officially moving to the ad-supported business model which must mean ads are sold pretty well by the sales personnel in the network (one example we can all remember is the large-scale advertising campaign for G1 phone launched by T-Mobile that was intended to serve 2 billion of impressions during only 2 days and was estimated to bring $1.5 million to AOL advertising unit).
So now with addition of MediaGlow AOL has clearly achieved its goal of becoming a company focused on three main things for business: publishing, advertising, and socializing (via the People Networks, the social media unit of the company that combines social properties like Bebo, AIM, and ICQ).
It is very interesting to watch AOL transforming slowly but steadily into a content-oriented company more than anything else after serving as ISP and search engine for years. But I think there’s nothing wrong with it and it is only good to see the company restructuring the business to accommodate for the most successful activities and only supporting the least successful ones to the extent that is needed to maintain the minimum required presence.
