AOL Launches Programmatic Ad Platform ‘One’

By Chris Crum at WebProNews:

AOL has rebranded AOL Networks to AOL Platforms, and announced the launch of One, a cross-screen programmatic ad platform, which combines the teams and technologies behind Adap.tv, AdLearn Open Platform (AOP) and MarketPlace, and lives under the AOL Platforms brand.

Here’s the official description for One:

"ONE will be the first platform that empowers brands with a holistic view of the consumer’s journey through the marketing funnel, and makes that insight actionable, in real-time on the platform. Development on ONE is underway and customers will be able to start using portions of the platform later this year. The single, unified platform takes media planning and management to a new level, with predictive analytics that provide immediate insights on metrics like reach, frequency, and performance, and post-campaign insights that look across all screens and formats to deliver immediate impact on brand metrics. It is completely format, screen and inventory agnostic – from video, display and TV, to tablet, desktop and mobile devices, to reserved and non-reserved inventory across AOL or any other publisher or media source."

IPG Mediabrands plans to be the charter agency network partner for One. The news was announced at ad:tech in San Francisco.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said, “AOL has spent the last four years building platforms to facilitate the efficient and effective flow of advertising dollars to digital. We build brands – our own, and those of more than 22,000 publishers in our global network and the thousands of marketers we work with daily to help them accomplish their business goals in today’s fast moving, dynamic market. On the platforms side of our business, as machines automate more media decisions across TV to digital, we are well-positioned to help advertisers, agencies and publishers realize the true value of data-driven advertising.”


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AOL Sees Best Revenue Growth In Ten Years

AOL just released its Q4 earnings report, delivering its strongest revenue growth in a decade.

Total revenue grew 13% year-over-year, mostly due to global ad revenue growth, which grew 23% itself. This includes 63% growth in third party network revenue and 7% growth in global display. Global search revenue decreased by 2%.

CEO Tim Armstrong said, “2013 was AOL’s most successful year in the last decade, and we accomplished our goal of industry level growth at scale for AOL. AOL’s exceptionally talented team continues to execute against our strategy and our results show meaningful progress in the most important areas of media and technology. AOL plans to invest in our market leading strategies in 2014, while we continue to grow the company.”



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Winamp Shutting Down on December 20, 2013

The end of an era is here. AOL announced that the music service Winamp is shutting down on December 20, 2013. This move affects its website, Winamp.com, associated Web services, and also its Winamp Media players. And here’s an interesting fact: Winamp has been around 15 years.

Initially released in 1997 as a media player by two college students, Winamp gained popularity with the rising trend of MP3 file sharing, but increased competition from newer rivals including online music streaming services — could have ultimately rendered it defunct for today’s Internet and computer users. Its parent company, Nullsoft, was acquired by AOL in 1999.



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Yahoo Defeats Google: Gets More Unique Visitors in July

Yahoo dethroned Google as the top destination of U.S. web users in July,comScore reported. Yahoo had an estimated 197 million unique visitors in July, compared to Google's 192 million. However, mobile device visits aren't included in those figures.

While these aren't the most comprehensive traffic figures, comScore's July numbers show that Yahoo boosted its traffic by around 20 percent compared to last July. This is the first time Yahoo has taken the top spot on comScore's list since May 2011.

Also of note, Tumblr, which Yahoo recently acquired, didn't help pass Google on unique visitors. Tumblr ranked at 28th in the list, with roughly 38 million visitors during the month of July.

The usual suspects – Microsoft, Facebook and AOL – took the third, fourth and fifth spots, raking in an estimated 180 million, 142 million and 117 million unique visitors last month, respectively.

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AOL Is Acquiring Video Ad Platform Adap.tv For $405M

AOL just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire video advertising platform Adap.tv in a deal that should be worth a total of $405 million — $322 million in cash and $83 million in AOL common stock.

“AOL is a leader in online video and the combination of AOL and Adap.tv will create the leading video platform in the industry,” said AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong in the press release announcing the deal. (That’s Armstrong at the right of the photo with Adap.tv CEO Amir Ashkenazi.) “The Adap.tv founders and team are on a mission to make advertising as easy as e-commerce and the two companies together will aggressively pursue that vision.”

This tops the $315 million that AOL paid for the Huffington Post, making it the company’s largest acquisition since Armstrong became CEO in 2009. Business Insider reported in July that AOL had made an offer of about $400 million for the company.

Adap.tv will operate as an independent part of AOL’s video organization, which is led by senior vice president Ran Harnevo, and which itself is part of the broader ad offerings at AOL Networks (where Bob Lord was recently hired as CEO). The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

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Facebook Drops From 2nd To 5th Most Popular Online Video Site

By Megan O'Neill at Social Times:
comScore has released their August 2012 U.S. Online Video Rankings, revealing that online video content has reached an all-time high, with over 188 million unique viewers in the United States.  But it looks like people aren’t getting their online video fixes in the same places that they used to.  Back in July, Facebook was second only to Google Sites (aka YouTube) in terms of total unique viewers.  In August, Facebook dropped to the fifth spot, below Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and VEVO.

Facebook dropped from 53 million total unique viewers in July to 47 million in August, and from 327 million total videos watched in July to 261 million in August.  While YouTube also saw a decrease in viewership, dropping from 156 million uniques in July to 150 million in August, Google Sites still had the highest average engagement.
While it is unclear exactly what accounted for the drop in uniques and viewership across sites (though it’s likely to have something to do with end-of-summer travel and the beginning of the school year), total viewership is up with 87.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience watching online video.

Online video ads are also on the rise and comScore reports that “video ads accounted for 20.1 percent of all videos viewed” in August.  Now, it should be noted that while ads accounted for approximately one-fifth of the total videos viewed, ads are general shorter than content, so they only accounted for 1.4 percent of the actual time spent viewing video online.


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INFOGRAPHIC: How People Spend Their Time Online

Have you ever wondered what a normal Internet user do? How do people spend their time online. What are the most popular Internet activities. What are the most visited websites? Or on What websites People Spend most of their time
This Infographic is Designed and brought to you by Go-Gulf.com

 

Is AOL Looking To Go Head-to-Head With YouTube?

By Megan O'Neill at Social Times:  
On Tuesday at the Digital Content NewFronts, AOL launched a brand new online video hub that will centralize all AOL video in one place.  The AOL On Network seems to have a lot in common with many of YouTube’s new initiatives.  The service will feature 14 content channels with original, curated content for all sorts of niches from entertainment to tech, style, food, business, health, travel and more.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong says, “AOL is a brand company.  With the launch of AOL On we are bringing people closer to the things that matter while helping them discover and share the stories and information that color their lives.”
The AOL On Network will aggregate new content with video content from the AOL family of sites, including TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, Engadget and others.  PCMag reports that the content represents “a potential viewer audience around 57 million in the U.S.  In addition to the desktop experience, AOL On will also focus a good deal of effort on delivering content to specialized television boxes such as Roku, Google TV, Boxee, AOL On HD via Samsung and Sony, as well as mobile platforms like tablets and smartphones.”
At the NewFronts, AOL also announced that as part of AOL On they will be launching seven original shows.  The shows include ‘Digital Justice,’ a weekly reality show about Internet crime, and ‘Fetching, ’ from ‘Sex and the City’ writer Amy Harris.  ‘Fetching’ will star Collette Wolfe and Sandra Vergara and is about a lawyer that quits her job, leaves her fiancé and opens a doggie day-care business.
Additionally, AOL On will feature playlists curated by celebrities like Rachel Ray, Heidi Klum, and ‘Entourage’ actor Adrian Grenier.
Check out the Beet.TV interview with Ran Harnevo, SVP, Video at AOL On, below to find out more about the launch, check out the service at on.aol.com and let us know what you think!

Facebook Acquires 650 AOL Patents From Microsoft

By David Cohen at AllFacebook: 
Facebook reached an agreement with Microsoft to acquire about 650 of the 925 or so patents and patent applications the software giant acquired from AOL earlier this month.
Microsoft shelled out more than $1 billion for ownership of or the right to assign some 925 patents and patent applications from AOL, and it will recoup about one-half of that from the social network, which will pay $550 million in cash for approximately 650 AOL patents and patent applications, as well as a license to the Microsoft-owned AOL patents and applications.

The move today marks the latest step in the complex relationship between Facebook, Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo. Facebook is currently embroiled in a controversial patent-infringement lawsuit filed by Yahoo in March. Meanwhile, last September, AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft joined forces to challenge Facebook on the online display advertising revenue front.

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INFOGRAPHIC: The History Of Social Media (1978-2012)

By Shea Bennett at Media Bistro:
Social media? That’s all Twitter and Facebook, right? And didn’t it start in the last few years?
Not so. Despite appearances, the history of social media traces back as far as the late 1970s, when computer hobbyists Ward Christensen and Randy Suess invented the bulletin board system (BBS). The launch of the Mosaic web browser in 1993 gave birth to the world wide web, and from here we never looked back. From Geocities and Blogger in the late 90s, through to Friendster and MySpace in at the turn of the millennium, the path to present day social stalwarts Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and the white-hot Pinterest, is littered with success and failure, innovation and disappointment.
This infographic takes a closer look at the history of social media, circa 1978-2012.

comScore: Bing Takes No. 2 Spot From Yahoo in December 2011

By John Rampton at SearchEngineWatch: 
Bing is finally the No. 2 search engine in the U.S., according to the latest figures from comScore. Bing which launched in June 2009 with an 8.4 percent search engine market share, now accounts for 15.1 percent of searches.
As Yahoo dropped to third, Google continued to lead all search engines in December with 65.9 percent market share.
The search engine rankings for December 2011, according to comScore, were:

• Google rose to 65.9 percent (up from 65.4 percent in November). 
• Bing rose to 15.1 percent (up from 15 percent in November). 
• Yahoo dropped to 14.5 percent (down from 15.1 percent). 
• Ask remained at 2.9 percent. 
• AOL remained at 1.6 percent

More than 18.2 billion explicit core searches were conducted in December. This is up 2 percent from November. Google lead the way with 12 billion of the total searches; Bing ended up with 2.7 billion, followed close by Yahoo with 2.6 billion. Ask Network with 531 million searches, followed by AOL with 287 million.
In December, 68.1 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while Bing powered around 26.5 percent of searches.

11 Days That Shaped 2011 As Measured by Social Media

 

By Neil Vidyarthi at SocialTimes:
AOL has released their best moments of 2011 list as measured by comments, shares and tweets.  The list includes the tragic death of Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey’s final show and the Occupy Movement.  Check it out.

The list of events is here,
AOL’s “11 Days That Shaped 2011”, in chronological order:
Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
The Arab Spring
Charlie Sheen’s Meltdown
8.9 Earthquake Hits Japan
The Royal Wedding
Osama Bin Laden Killed
End of the Oprah Winfrey Show
Debt Ceiling Crisis
10th Anniversary of 9/11
Occupy Wall Street
Death of Steve Jobs

Leaked: Company Guidelines for How Cops Can Access Your Private Online Accounts

Guidelines for how police can acquire information from online accounts like Facebook, AOL, Blizzard and Microsoft, and the types of data stored and for how long were leaked this week by several sources.
CNET reports the law enforcement guidelines as being confidential but some sites are more transparent about what they keep and what police can access without a search warrant. Here‘s what CNET pulled together from each of the companies’ policies:

Blizzard: Logs of Internet Protocol addresses are kept “indefinitely,” according to the company behind World of Warcraft. Sent mail is not retained. Deleted mail messages are not retained.
Facebook: An earlier version of the company’s manual from 2008 said that “IP log data is generally retained for 90 days.” That statement is missing from the newly-released 2010 version, indicating that Facebook now may store data longer (a company spokesman did not respond to that question).
Microsoft/MSN: Hotmail IP logs are kept for 60 days. MSN TV’s Web site logs are kept for 13 days. No logs are kept for conversations taking place through MSN chat rooms and MSN instant messenger. The leaked document is from April 2005, though, and may be out of date.
AOL: IP logs for the AIM and ICQ messaging services are stored for up to 90 days. Customer logs are kept for 6 months. All AOL e-mail, including from portals such as AOL.ca, AOL.fr, and AOL.mx, is stored in its Northern Virginia data center.

As for who leaked the guidelines, CNET reports that AOL, Blizzard and Microsoft were released by Anonymous and Facebook by PublicIntelligence.net, which is refers to as a “Wikileaks-like effort”.

After the manuals were put out on the Internet, Facebook released its full manual for law enforcement, which CNET reports may or may not be coincidence. But in the past other sites have been less apt to have this information go public. According to CNET, last year John Young, who runs the Cryptome.org document repository, posted the manual for Microsoft Windows, which the company then tried to have removed from his site through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This request was soon after withdrawn.
According to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, email accounts, and other information, hosted third-party servers can be accessed if they are six months old or older without a search warrant. Some are calling for the law to be updated as the technology has evolved since its enactment in 1986. CNET reports that a subpoena usually releases general information from these sites, while a court order may be required for more in depth info.

by  Liz Klimas at TheBlaze

INFOGRAPHIC: How The Internet Has Evolved From 1996-2011

In the last 15 years, a lot has changed. The landscape of the world has changed dramatically, but one of the things that has evolved the most since 1996 is the Internet. Social networking services have become increasingly prominent as technology has become more ubiquitous, but the face of the Internet, the World Wide Web (as it was more commonly known in 1996), has changed almost beyond recognition.
A new infographic published by Online University takes a look at just how much the Internet has changed since 1996. The number of Internet users in the U.S. has increased from
20 million to 245 million, while Americans are now using the Web an average of 27 hours per month compared with
30 minutes per month 15 years ago.
The Google network of websites (which didn’t even exist 15 years ago) now reaches 85.1 percent of Internet users. Yahoo and Microsoft websites reach 83.2 percent and 80.9 percent of Internet users respectively, while Facebook reaches 75 percent of all Internet users. Of these, only Yahoo was in the top 10 websites based on percentage of users reached in 1996. How times have changed.
The infographic, which you can click to enlarge, also looks at how certain websites have changed since 1996.