New Platform-A Logo Toppled

AOL today revealed the logo for its Platform-A advertising division. Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A, said that the new logo “effectively communicates our distinct competitive advantage of scale and reach. And its bold and simple design fits with our mission of providing advertisers and publishers with effective, impactful and easy-to-use solutions to their digital advertising needs.” Complementary brand identities for companies owned by Platform-A will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

A quick question to Lynda, are you going to rebrand the name? It looks pretty half baked with the hyphen.

And why is the logo toppled? Get it up and running. It is high time.

This is interesting to note, in light of the new figures released by comScore show that AOL’s Platform A advertising network is the top advertising network in the United States by reach (unique visitors).

According to the figures, Platform A reaches 90.7% of all American internet users, ahead of Yahoo on 85.3% and Google on 80.9%. AOL’s figures include ads served from Advertising.com.

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The Wall Street Journal (4/25, Steel, B1, 2.06M) reports, “A yearlong effort by AOL to transform its content Web sites into crowd-pleasers is beginning to pay off.” The Journal continues, “Traffic to the sites — including AOL Money & Finance, entertainment, and the male-oriented Asylum — grew 15% to 56.5 million unique U.S. visitors in the first quarter from a year ago, according to comScore Media Metrix. Measured by traffic, some of the sites even top the charts for their categories.” AOL “still hasn’t translated the surge in visits into higher ad revenue. But the news is positive for the Time Warner Inc. unit, which has struggled with another initiative — building AOL into a major digital ad-sales firm.” The content push “is part of AOL’s bid to reinvent itself as an ad-supported Web company following its August 2006 decision to make its Internet-access service free. Visits to AOL’s Web sites slowed as a side-effect of that decision. … To draw visitors back, AOL redesigned sites in the news, sports and health categories. It also created a half-dozen new sites that don’t use the AOL name, such as a technology-focused site called Switched, a hip-hop site called BlackVoices, and a Web trend tracker called Urlesque.com, as well as Asylum. Dropping its name was an acknowledgement that the brand wasn’t hip enough for the consumers AOL was trying to attract.” AOL “also adopted some common tricks of the trade, such as making its sites appear higher in search-engine results.”
Time Warner To Announce Quarterly Results On Wednesday. MarketWatch (4/24, Wilkerson) reported, “Analysts will be anticipating higher profits at several large media conglomerates such as Time Warner Inc., Comcast Corp. and Viacom Inc. next week, but will also be on the lookout for signs that a shaky U.S. economy is having an adverse effect on spending by advertisers and consumers.” Time Warner announces its quarterly results Wednesday morning, and analysts see the company “earning 23 cents a share on revenue of $11.4 billion. In the year-earlier quarter, excluding discontinued operations and special items - including the effect of accounting changes — the company would have earned 22 cents a share on sales of $11.2 billion.” Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes “will surely have to field questions about speculation that AOL could hook up with Yahoo. … As usual, analysts will be monitoring advertising growth at AOL, which has been declining for several quarters.” Time Warner “has pointed out that AOL has discontinued several ‘nonprofitable’ sponsorships, and that ad demand is shifting to third-party networks.”

As Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo all wrestle with Microsoft ’s attempt to buy Yahoo , Google decided it needed some outside counsel. Google CEO Eric Schmidt chose none other than Frank Quattrone, who was cleared of obstruction of justice charges last year, to whisper sweet hostile take-over nothings into his ear.

For the last two-plus months, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others have been in a slow dance as everyone tries to get what they want out of the MicroHoo deal. Google wants to keep the two firms apart. Microsoft wants to acquire Yahoo. Poor Yahoo just wants to be left alone, it likes dancing by itself. In the last few days, things have become more interesting, with AOL, and News Corp. joining the dance. Fivesomes rarely work out, though. Someone is going to come away from this dance empty-handed and disappointed.

If Eric Schmidt has anything to do with it, it ain’t gonna be Google.

The New York Times is reporting that Schmidt has turned to his old crony, Quattrone, for help. He has hired Quattrone’s new law firm, the Qatalyst Group, to provide legal counsel and help it strategize the movements of this dance. Schmidt and Quattrone have worked together in the past. Quattrone was one of the first investment bankers to consult with Google when it was but a lowly startup in the late 1990s. Further, Schmidt was party to the creation of Quattrone’s new firm.

Quattrone, of course, was beset by the U.S. legal system for years on obstruction of justice charges. After two trials, Uncle Sam gave up on one of the charges, and he was cleared of another conviction when the presiding judge misinformed the jury about how to interpret the law. Technically, he’s not a criminal. Are his hands clean? Who is to say.

Whatever happened in Quattrone’s past, he’s obviously looking to recapture the former glory of a life lived in the business spotlight. As the impact of this acquisition will reverberate around the Internet for years to come, any role he might play is sure to affect us all.

Yahoo! Inc., fending off Microsoft Corp.’s $44.6 billion acquisition offer, is close to striking an agreement to combine operations with Time Warner Inc.’s AOL unit, a person familiar with the situation said.

Yahoo would gain control of AOL, receive an investment from Time Warner, and give up a 20 percent stake in the combined entity, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks aren’t public. The investment would let Yahoo buy back billions of dollars of its own stock, the person said.

A linkup may increase pressure on Microsoft to raise its $31-a-share bid, rejected by Yahoo in February as too low. Yahoo said today it will test Google Inc.’s advertising technology, which may boost sales from links that appear next to Web search results. Last week, Microsoft threatened a proxy fight to take control of Yahoo’s board if no agreement is reached.

“They’re delay tactics,” Laura Martin, an analyst at New York-based Soleil Securities Corp., said of Yahoo’s actions. She rates Yahoo shares “hold” and doesn’t own any. “They’re just going to irritate Microsoft and accelerate a proxy fight.”

Diana Wong, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo, didn’t immediately return a call for comment. Time Warner spokesman Ed Adler declined to comment.

Alternatives

The talks with AOL and Google, owner of the most-used Internet search engine, indicate that Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang is making progress with discussions two months after telling investors that the company is seeking alternatives to Microsoft’s bid. Microsoft’s offer was 62 percent higher than Yahoo’s closing price the previous day.

Yahoo, owner of the most-visited U.S. Web site, rose 7 cents to $27.77 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. After jumping 48 percent on Feb. 1, the day after Microsoft’s bid, the stock has declined 2.1 percent.

Time Warner, the world’s largest media company, fell 30 cents to $14.43 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Shares of the New York-based have declined 13 percent this year.

Separately, the New York Times reported that News Corp. is in talks to join Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo, citing people involved in the discussions. The deal would combine Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN and News Corp.’s MySpace, the newspaper said.

Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment. Teri Everett, a spokeswoman for New York- based News Corp., said the company doesn’t comment on “speculation.”

Challenging Google

Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, is pursuing Yahoo to challenge Google’s dominance of the $41 billion online ad market. Yahoo responded to Microsoft’s threat of a proxy fight by insisting on a higher price before an acquisition can take place.

A combination with AOL would bring together the second and fourth most-used Internet search engines in the U.S. Google is the most-popular, attracting 59.2 percent of queries in February, according to Reston, Virginia-based researcher ComScore Inc. Yahoo had 21.6 percent, followed by Microsoft with 9.6 percent and AOL with 4.9 percent.

Unable to catch Google in search, Yahoo said today that it’s starting a two-week trial in the U.S. to run its rival’s ads alongside no more than 3 percent of search queries.

Yahoo and Google have been here before. In 2000, Yahoo chose Google as its default search engine, an agreement that lasted until 2003. Yahoo’s then-CEO Terry Semel orchestrated the acquisitions of Inktomi Corp. and Overture Services Inc. to build a new search service.

Yahoo’s Panama

Last year, Yahoo introduced an ad platform, called Panama, designed to make search ads more relevant and more likely to be clicked. In a presentation to investors last month, Yahoo said it had reduced the gap in revenue per search between its own engine and Google’s in the U.S. by 30 percent in the first nine months of 2007. At the end of last year, a difference of 60 percent to 70 percent still exists, the company said.

While a partnership with Google may cut Yahoo’s costs, a deal would face stiff regulatory scrutiny. Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, said today that the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, would examine any formal agreement to “ensure that it does not harm competition.” Microsoft echoed that possibility after the announcement.

“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90 percent of the search advertising market in Google’s hands,” Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. “This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal.”

Source: Bloomberg

The AOL Technology Network launched, bringing together Engadget, Switched, TUAW, DownloadSquad, Engadget Mobile and Engadget HD into the second-largest tech news and info publisher online. The cornestone of the network, Engadget and Switched, also unveiled new designs.
The network pulls together some of the fastest-growing tech blogs and makes it easier for advertisers to buy across the sites. Marty Moe, who heads Money & Finance and Weblogs, said, “The new network, coupled with the redesign, brings together one of the largest and most valuable consumer technology audiences.”

Read more in the press release.

Ed Oswald wrote at BetaNews, “AOL will aggregate its tech-oriented sites through a single portal, attempting to cash in on an already broad user base accessing those blogs.” Switched “will now become the hub for the company’s efforts, and draw in content from various blogs already under AOL’s tech umbrella. Additionally, the site will lose prominent AOL branding.” Oswald continued, “With a more cohesive group powering AOL’s tech section, its reach will be approximately five million visitors per month. This makes it about twice the size of Wired, and about the same size as Yahoo Tech. It also makes the network more palatable to advertisers, who will be able to market a brand with a significant reach. In a statement announcing the formation, AOL indeed referred to this, saying it will be easier to buy advertising across these sites. ‘We’re bringing together some of the Web’s most powerful and fastest-growing tech blogs to create a technology publishing powerhouse,’ weblogs chief Marty Moe said in a statement.”
MediaPost Publications reports, “AOL’s new Technology Network will offer a resource to gather information about technology news and products, and, perhaps more importantly, enable advertisers to more easily integrate ad campaigns across related AOL properties. ‘One of our top priorities at Platform-A is to make it easier for advertisers to leverage the power of digital media, and the AOL Technology Network helps us achieve this goal,’ said Lynda Clarizio, who was recently appointed president of Platform-A ad platform.” The piece continued, “The solution, as Clarizio well understands, is consolidating and integrating Platform-A’s and AOL’s various parts. ‘Combining these great technology information sites into one network lets us offer marketers the ability to more easily buy across these sites,’ she said.”
David Kaplan wrote at paidContent.org, “AOL (NYSE: TWX) is finally updating its portal’s blog structures with the introduction of the AOL Technology Network, which will house its related Weblogs sites like Engadget, Switched, TUAW, and others, the few among Weblogs Inc network that made it through the AOL management changes. Previously, AOL’s blog properties were categorized individually and operated independently, with no rhyme of reason for the separation. In fact, Switched was previously part of AOL News. The more orderly placement is designed to make it easier for Platform-A, AOL’s ad services network, to create more integrated ad campaigns among similar sites.”
Mike Sachoff wrote at WebProNews, “Endgadget has also rolled out a new design. From Endgadget, ‘We went through and really cleaned up the joint, yanking out old modules and ads wherever possible.’”

Over the past two years, Lynda Clarizio has helped build Advertising.com, AOL’s ad network, into one of the hottest properties in online advertising. Her reward: She gets to try to clean up one of the Internet company’s messiest divisions.

Time Warner’s AOL unit is aiming to transform itself from an Internet service provider into a full-service digital-advertising business. To that end, it has spent about $1 billion to buy seven ad-technology firms with different areas of expertise, from behavioral targeting to video ads. The next step is to knit them together with Advertising.com — an entity AOL has dubbed Platform A, but has yet to take to market.

AOL’s future largely hinges on the success of that transformation, which involves aggressively slashing costs, forsaking billions of dollars in overall subscription revenue, and laying off thousands of employees. Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes has said that mission is key to plotting a new course for a company whose stock price has stagnated in recent years.

But Platform A is off to a rocky start. In its first six months, it has been marked by failed sales targets, tensions among its different business groups, and, most recently, the dismissal of its president, Curt Viebranz. A number of marketers say they are ready to spend their ad dollars with Platform A, but can’t because the disparate units still operate independently.

The idea behind Platform A is that AOL can be a one-stop shop for placing ads both on AOL’s own Web sites and on the broader Web, through its ad networks like Advertising.com, which sell ads on thousands of Web sites. So far, though, the company is a long way from that reality. AOL is fourth among the major Web portals — behind Google, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo — in ad revenue, and the pace of its ad-revenue growth has also dropped off. AOL’s ad revenue grew 12% in 2007, compared with 37% in 2006 and 38% in 2005, according to research firm eMarketer.

Even Advertising.com, a rare bright spot in AOL’s business recently, is facing new pressures. A major part of a two-year deal with its biggest advertiser, Apollo Group’s University of Phoenix, ended in January. Advertising.com was University of Phoenix’s exclusive online marketing partner, managing its ad buys both on its network of sites and on other ad networks. The deal generated $215 million for AOL in 2007, up $58 million from $157 million in 2006, and accounted for 17% of AOL’s ad-revenue growth last year. (University of Phoenix will continue to buy ads on the Advertising.com network, but decided to take its ad buying in-house.)

AOL’s biggest competitors are developing their own ad networks, which will make life tougher for Advertising.com. “If I get the inkling they are not innovating, I’m going to look elsewhere and talk to Yahoo or any of the other Web giants,” says Tom Hespos, president of Underscore Marketing, a closely held digital agency in New York.

AOL executives have picked Ms. Clarizio, 47 years old, to rescue Platform A, which has the widest reach of any ad network in the country — reaching 90% of the U.S. online audience, according to comScore — but isn’t able to effectively sell across that spectrum yet. A nine-year veteran of AOL, Ms. Clarizio led the deal team that acquired Advertising.com in 2004 for $435 million. That unit has accounted for nearly a quarter of AOL’s revenue and is one of the fastest-growing parts of the company.

Trained as a lawyer, Ms. Clarizio is known internally for an analytical mind and an ability to delegate. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, she came to AOL from Washington law firm Arnold & Porter, where she was a partner for seven years and also worked as an AOL outside counsel.

While AOL is known as a relatively slow-moving, bureaucratic company, Advertising.com has developed a different reputation. “AOL has reinvented itself so many times. It is hard to keep track,” says Adam Schlachter, senior partner and group director at Mediaedge:cia, a media-planning firm that is a part of WPP Group’s Group M. “(Advertising.com) has been able to grow steadily, consistently and innovate.”

Ad.com grew from a cramped townhouse on the outskirts of Baltimore, where brothers Scott and John Ferber opened a digital advertising company called TeknoSurf in 1998. Their idea was to piece together a network of Web sites where they would buy ad space, then resell it to advertisers at a premium. It changed its name to Advertising.com in 2000.

Ms. Clarizio tried to embrace Ad.com’s start-up spirit. The company remained at its Baltimore headquarters, instead of relocating to AOL’s Dulles, Va., base, 60 miles away. She dressed up for Halloween and competed in relay races.

She also has tried to get the company’s various sales teams and engineers working on common goals. During daily 9 a.m. meetings in Ad.com’s “War Room,” midlevel executives discuss the previous day’s results and chart the next day’s goals.

Ms. Clarizio wants to replicate that culture at Platform A, which suffers from duplication among its sales, tech and other groups. Different ad units, for instance, call on the same clients — in essence competing for the business. One of Ms. Clarizio’s first moves in her new post was to announce a “leadership team” for Platform A. The new structure puts in place one sales team, one technology team, one
product and operations team, one marketing team and one publisher-services team to cut across all the company’s different ad units.

Some digital-advertising executives question whether combining sales teams is the right strategy. They fear Ad.com’s emphasis on data-driven results will come to dominate Platform A, frustrating bigger-brand marketers used to the tailored campaigns they have gotten from some of AOL’s ad-sales teams.

But Ms. Clarizio is moving full speed ahead with the integration. AOL also announced last week that it has integrated two of the companies that provided separate search-engine-marketing services — Advertising.com and Quigo, a contextual targeting ad firm AOL acquired last fall. “It’s an example of what we need to do across the board. It’s definitely an iterative process and takes a lot of work to do that,” Ms. Clarizio says.