Davis ThinkingIn today’s world of changing business models, mass entrepreneurs, and a growing “maker economy,” we find a hotbed of innovation ecosystems.
Twitter made its most aggressive grab for TV marketing dollars, with the release of a TV ad during the Pocono 400 and the launch of the corresponding Twitter.com/#NASCAR hashtag page. See Twitter, like AOL before it, wants to be the destination for users who wish to engage with a certain brand. It wants to own the URL that runs at the end of an ad. Actually, scratch that — it wants to own the hashtag that appears during the ad or TV show, to become synonymous with where the conversation happens.
It’s not easy being the Ford Motor of the Internet. And that, in short, is the predicament facing AOL, according to its chief executive, Timothy M. Armstrong, who spoke Tuesday as part of the three-day UBS media conference in New York.
The Huffington Post made a name for itself through a formula of buzzy political commentary splashed with celebrity gossip and traffic-grabbing tricks. Now its co-founder, Arianna Huffington, is plunging into a campaign to rescue AOL Inc.. As the new editor in chief of AOL's 56 content sites, a job she began after AOL's $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post closed last month, Ms. Huffington is installing her employees, pushing coverage of her pet topics and gutting aspects of AOL's existing system to do so. "There was no clear editorial direction," she said of AOL's collection of sites, settling into her new office in New York recently. "That's what we're bringing to the table now."
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told Ad Age today that he wants a "build-first" culture at his company, in which the growth is sparked internally, like the world's oldest startup. So why did he also just pay a reported $30 million, including incentives, to buy TechCrunch, the tech and startup news blog founded by former attorney and impresario Michael Arrington?
AOL's hyper-local news division Patch launched its 100th news site today, underscoring just how quickly AOL is advancing its bid for original content through journalism. The company says it will launch 400 more such local news sites across the U.S. by year's end as well as hire 300 more journalists. A growing swell of mass-content players are tempting content from a wide variety of freelancers, of course, with more companies sure to adopt the model in their wake. Earlier this month one of the biggest content generators, Demand Media, announced its plans for an initial public offering. Last spring Yahoo bought another one, Associated Content, for some $100 million. But these platforms and companies aren't all the same, whether for advertisers or for freelancers.
Publish2 has unveiled its first big play — a news content bartering system intended to make major online news sources capable of achieving scale, to let a network of news providers compete with syndication monopolies like the Associated Press and others, and to allow trusted brands to leverage quality content across media, including print. Karp’s premise is that there is a latent “content graph,” analogous to the social graph being leveraged by Facebook and Twitter.
John Ross, president of the research and development arm of Interpublic Group's Mediabrands, thinks retailers have a big problem. Their circulars, which worked in the offline world for decades, haven't caught up with consumer habits online.
Per Wednesday’s speculation, LA private equity firm Criterion Capital Partners has confirmed it’s buying social network Bebo from AOL. Criterion isn’t disclosing any deal terms or price, which has been reported at $2.5 million by PEHub or $10 million by TechCrunch, two years after AOL bought Bebo for $850 million.
When I was in Shanghai a few of weeks ago, I was invited to sit with some of Asia’s top bloggers to listen to an interactive marketing agency explaining their social media marketing strategy. There was much talk about creating conversations through blogger outreach and, I guess, the idea was to be transparent about what they did and how they acted with new media publishers.
AOL is planning to hire hundreds of journalists, editors and videographers in the coming year as it builds out its content-first business model. David Eun, president of AOL's media and studios division, is expected to announce the push in an all-hands meeting of the group in New York today when he lays out his strategy for the unit that will include grouping all the sites into 17 "super-networks."
Six months after rebooting their identity and to coincide with their 25th anniversary celebrations, AOL has unleashed its “2nd Collection” of logos and animations with help from designers, illustrators and animators around the world, with direction by Wolff Olins. To consolidate this effort, AOL has launched AOL Artists, a repository of all the contributors and snippets of their work, a fairly generous move to acknowledge these artists’ work and give them some additional exposure.
A few weeks ago, as Steve Case was flying above Sterling, en route to Dulles International Airport, he looked down and saw the sprawling campus that is home to the company he co-founded 25 years ago this month -- the pioneering service that took millions of people online for the first time.
A belated blog on Hits and Misses for 2010. Please vote by clicking here. Then we meet back in a year and see how we did.
AOL has unveiled Advertising.com Ad Desk, a new campaign management platform aimed at mid-size agencies and advertisers. The new Ad Desk will allow display advertisers to take a more active role in their online ad campaigns. They’ll be able to access information (such as demographics and audience size) on AOL’s various properties, and make decisions on how and when campaigns should run -- without having to go through AOL’s own sales force.
Things seem a bit adrift at AOL, and the Bebo news makes it seem all that much more... well, drifty. AOL bought the site just two years ago for $850 million, which is nothing to scoff at. CEO Tim Armstrong, who has been on the job since last April, pledged support for Bebo during his first 100 days media tour last June (Obama envy, anyone?). "I think the Bebo team in general could benefit from being in an environment where they can purely focus on Bebo and growing Bebo," he said then. "We're trying to give them kind of a corral where they can live and grow and really act like a start-up without being constrained to the larger strategy the company has."
As a metaphor, white space is at once ubiquitous and frustratingly ambiguous. There may be as many definitions circulating as there are business thinkers. Some people define it as a place where there's no competition. Others as an entirely new market. Still others use it, as Tim Armstrong has, to refer to gaps in existing markets or product lines. For all its ambiguity, though, white space is undoubtedly a metaphor about opportunity; different thinkers define it differently because they take varying approaches to capturing opportunity. In that spirit, let me offer up another way to look at white space — a very specific meaning I think would be particularly useful to Tim Armstrong and to any other top executive engaged in strategy formulation.
"To build a global medium as central to people's lives as the telephone or television ... and even more valuable." This was Steve Case's vision in the early 1990s, and everyone wanted to be a part of it. The company he founded, American Online, was one of the nation's most admired. By turning Internet access into a home utility, AOL became one of the nation's most admired brands and workplaces. It was the Google or the Facebook of its time. Then something happened.
Facebook's and AOL's instant-messaging systems now can link together. It's a step forward--but one that also shows how backward Net communications are today. "AIM has teamed up with Facebook, and now you can chat with your Facebook friends--right from AIM!" gushes the AIM beta download site. "After you sign into AIM, click the 'Facebook Connect' button at the top of your buddy list to set up Facebook chat. When you are done your Facebook friends will be added to your buddy list. You can now chat with your friends who are using the Facebook site!" Maybe I should be happier about this than I am. I can't begrudge Facebook's effort to enrich its members communications' options through its 2008 launch of instant messaging, but I also can't help feeling this is a case of a new-era Internet company making the same missteps as its dot-com 1.0 predecessors.
Google Inc. reported its strongest revenue growth in a year and issued its firmest public statement saying it would like to continue doing business in China, a week after it said it may pull out of the country due to a sweeping cyber attack. The Mountain View, Calif., company said its revenue rose 17% in the fourth quarter to $6.67 billion from a year earlier, up from only 7% revenue growth in the third quarter and 3% growth in the second quarter. Meanwhile, Google's profit more than quintupled in the fourth quarter to $1.97 billion, or $6.13 a share, from $382 million, or $1.21 a share, a year ago. During the 2008 quarter, Google took a charge related to investments in AOL Inc. and wireless service provider Clearwire Corp.
Ad Age's Survey of Heavy Hitters From Marketers, Media and Agencies Finds Determination to Thrive
A decade ago, America Online merged with Time Warner in a deal valued at a stunning $350 billion. It was then, and is now, the largest merger in American business history. The Internet, it was believed, was soon to vaporize mainstream media business models on the spot. America Online’s frothy stock price made it worth twice as much as Time Warner’s with less than half the cash flow.
2009 has been a great year for Brand New, with a bottomless source of new and redesigned identities from around the world, and we’ve all had good fun critiquing them in sickness and in health. But it all comes down to this: The Best and Worst. I have gone through all the archives and selected the top 12 in each category. There were some dead-ringers for each category and some that required a little more self-deliberation acknowledging that some identities were left off the list. And just as well, I know my selections may incite some disagreements, which are more than welcome as we bring this year to a close.
AOL began its life anew as independent company on Thursday, when Time Warner completed the spin-off of the Internet company nearly a decade after it merged with it in one of the most disastrous combinations in corporate history. Investors and the media seemed to greet the event with little more than a collective “ho-hum.” Tim Armstrong, who became chief executive of AOL in March, rang the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange. He then headed for a press conference, as AOL’s shares dipped around 2.5 percent in morning trading.
AOL is on its own. After seven months of preparation, AOL is set to be officially independent of media giant Time Warner Inc., closing the book on their disastrous 2001 merger and opening a new chapter for the struggling Internet company. AOL Inc. will be a slimmer, more focused company, preparing to battle against Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in the $29 billion U.S. market for online advertising. It is betting on a strategy centered on becoming the top creator of news, information, entertainment and other digital content.
Once the darling of the proprietary online services industry, AOL was fresh with promise, offering an ever-changing array of content, features and services to eager users. Looking back, its early days were marked by system outages, usability nightmares, functionality break downs, and bugs. As both a business and personal user of AOL, I remember clearly that many of the early features offered to businesses were immature, insufficient and frustrating to use. This improved over time but posed many short-term hassles for those in the Digital Marketplace for years. This is where we are with Facebook today.
AOL’s new chief plans to combine algorithms, marketing partnerships and cheap freelance writers in order to turn the stale web property into a vibrant online content factory pumping out stories to fit the zeitgeist. Tim Armstrong, a former Google ad executive, wants AOL to create automated content for the people. The idea is to mine search data and traffic patterns to find the latest hot searches and then automatically commission matching stories from a bevy of freelancers at Seed.com, according to the Wall Street Journal.
AOL is putting the finishing touches on a high-tech system for mass-producing news articles, entertainment and other online content, the linchpin of Chief Executive Tim Armstrong's strategy for reviving the struggling 25-year-old Internet company after Time Warner spins it off next month. Mr. Armstrong's goal is to make AOL, which has been losing visitors and revenue, a magnet for both advertisers and consumers by turning it into the top creator of digital content. He hopes to do so in part by turning some media and marketing conventions on their ear, and potentially blurring the lines between journalism and advertising.
Bad news isn't bad wine. It doesn't improve with age. According to Bain & Co, 80% of CEOs think their brands offer a superior experience, but only 8% of their consumers agreed. AOL seemed to have gleaned that fact. AOL's running man (logo) had already run off the cliff, revealing a brand that was desecrated, unoriginal, normalized and downtrodden. The business goal of any brand is to create more users, new users or new uses by continually innovating to add value to customer's lives. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong needs to ask himself: What is AOL's true brand ambition? What does he wish his AOL brand to be capable of achieving? With great brands come great benefits -- including higher customer loyalty, increased opportunities and elevated profits.
AOL unveiled a "new brand identity" Sunday night. Instead of AOL, it's "Aol." -- period included. There are also six new logos -- from a goldfish to a paint swirl. A spokesperson says more are coming. All of it is the result of work with brand consultant Wolff Olins, which AOL hired over the summer. AOL is spinning off from parent company Time Warner this December. Last week, it told employees it needs 2,500 of them to volunteer for layoffs. The company plans to turn itself into a next generation media company, building on the 80 or so blogs and content sites it already runs.
Online content can be "much better" -- and its improvement will be the focus of the next development stage of the Internet, AOL chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong said Friday. "That's why we are making such a big bet there," he said during a keynote appearance at the annual Media and Money Conference in New York. Adweek parent the Nielsen Co. and Dow Jones co-hosted the event. He argued that the first wave of Internet development focused on access; then platforms -- from Facebook to iTunes -- were in focus. But the next step will be content, which hasn't seen as much innovation, he said.
I spend a lot of time gazing into a crystal ball that I know is going to be cloudy half the time. Lately I have been pondering Facebook's future. Facebook is clearly on a roll and is knocking on Google's door as the biggest site on the web. Will it continue to dominate or see its lead slip? Here are two potential outcomes.
According to the Google Keyword Tool,there were 7.5 million broad match searches on the term ‘soap’ in September. Granted that some of the searches are related to “soap operas” rather than cleansing soaps, there are still quite a few people searching for the term. CPG companies are fueling this growth in search with increased investment in online advertising. In fact, according to TNS, one of the leading soap brands Dove spent nearly $5MM on online display advertising during the first half of this year. This investment is significantly greater than that of rival brands Softsoap and Olay. Due in part to their investment in online advertising, Compete’s data shows that site traffic to Dove.com are multiples greater than its competitors.
The rivalry between AOL and Yahoo is on prominent display this week, as the two struggling Internet companies compete for advertising dollars on Madison Avenue. They are pouring on the glitz as they vie for the attention of thousands of ad-industry professionals at the Advertising Week conference in New York. Marketers typically don't negotiate specific deals to buy ad space or time during the annual event. But media companies use it to tout themselves to the many ad agencies and advertisers in attendance, including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Verizon Communications, Bank of America and MasterCard Worldwide. The aim is to establish relationships and secure business down the road.
In the five months following Tim Armstrong's appointment as chief executive of AOL, the former Google executive has announced his plan to turn the subscription-based Internet provider into an online media and advertising giant. The first order of business was building content. Then he worked on creating a more powerful advertising network. Now the focus is marketing the company, which is trying to shed its image as a tired, unfocused Internet behemoth.
AOL is calling on Leo Burnett USA to help reinvent the brand and give the internet giant a new corporate identity as it prepares to spin off from Time Warner and emerge as an independent, publicly traded firm later this year. The move comes after AOL in July quietly reached out to five agencies, a mix of large, traditional ad firms and small design shops, in what AOL Chief Operating Officer Kim Partoll calls "a very accelerated pitch process."
Outside the local train station, the Maplewood Civic Association maintains a bulletin board plastered with news of jazz festivals and yoga classes for this small, affluent New Jersey town. One day last winter, an unassuming new flyer appeared, nestled between ones hawking a fish tank and a drum set, titled, "Introducing the Local." The flyer describes the Local as "a community Web site by you and for these communities, mentored by The New York Times." Why is a media titan like The New York Times Co. -- already stretched thin by the challenges of a faltering business model -- dabbling in community news, traditionally the bottom of the journalistic food chain? Call it the Google Effect. The search giant's model, described by author John Battelle as "a billion dollars, one nickel at a time," is a perfect description of how media companies hope to take tiny sources of local revenue and roll them up into big money.
For a time, Internet advertising was a rising tide lifting all boats. But as ad spending ebbs, there are more arguments about where on the Web advertising is the most fruitful. The fight over shrinking Internet ad dollars pits online publishers that offer premium content against major Web portals such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. Portals and publishers, meanwhile, also have to compete with the ad brokers that sell often cut-rate leftover ad space on Web pages with less visibility.
The office at Ninth Street and Broadway in Manhattan in the former Wanamaker’s department store has all of the trademarks of a well-financed digital start-up. Young people eat pizza and chat about applications while others are jammed into conference rooms discussing search optimization. The only oddity in the futuristic tableau comes when you step off the elevator to see three large letters: A O L.
For a time, Internet advertising was a rising tide lifting all boats. But as ad spending ebbs, there are more arguments about where on the Web advertising is the most fruitful. The fight over shrinking Internet ad dollars pits online publishers that offer premium content against major Web portals such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. Portals and publishers, meanwhile, also have to compete with the ad brokers that sell often cut-rate leftover ad space on Web pages with less visibility.
Like everyone else I’ve watched the print media world fall apart over the last few years. The poster child for that industry is the New York Times, of course, and their many missteps in recent memory have been well chronicled. In early 2008 Marc Andreessen started a New York Times Deathwatch, and the company’s financial performance has degraded since then. I keep wondering what would happen if the top 10% of the writers at the NYTimes just…walked out. I know it’s crazy, but let’s just explore this a bit for the heck of it.
Universal Pictures spent some $35 million promoting Bruno a summer movie with Sacha Baron Cohen about a homosexual fashion reporter. There were the typical TV and radio ads, says Doug Neil, Universal Pictures' senior vice president of digital marketing, but the plugs that built a viral hum and motivated moviegoers were video display ads embedded in instant messages.
Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit has acquired local online media companies Patch Media Corp. and Going Inc. as part of a broader strategy to build the company's position in the relatively fast-growing local online advertising market. The acquisitions come as Time Warner moves to split off AOL into an independent company and AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong, who joined the company in April, is working on putting together a new structure and strategy, in which local content is one major push.
Time Warner is going to spin off AOL by the end of the year. It should hurry up. It paid $124 billion in 2001; while that's less than a decade ago, it might has well have been a different planet. The Internet was fast becoming the superhighway for business and entertainment, and AOL owned one of the first and largest tollbooths. It was the Google and Twitter of its day. AOL made money, and seemed poised to be perhaps the dominant portal for Internet experience. Some critics even worried that it was poised to take over the Internet.
Since leaving his post as sales chief of Google to run AOL, Tim Armstrong has kicked off a review of the long-ailing internet icon's vast array of brands, with an eye toward creating a simpler experience for both consumers and the ad community.
Of all the people who have lined up thinking they could fix AOL, Tim Armstrong, Google's head of US ad sales, is certainly the most prominent. He's been at Google almost from the beginning — originally working out of his house in Connecticut — and he has played a huge role in making Google the ad juggernaut it is today. Thanks to all that work he's probably worth more than $500 million now. All of that will be good for AOL. Will it be good for Armstrong? He thinks so, obviously. I think he's lost his marbles.
Point a Web browser to Engadget.com, TheBoot.com, or TMZ.com, and elaborate sites about technology, country music and celebrity gossip will appear on the screen. They could easily be mistaken for stand-alone brands. But a small link to the owner, in a corner of the screen, shows otherwise. That owner is AOL, the long-suffering unit of Time Warner. And the subtle links are intentional.
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