On Monday (Jan. 15th, 2007) AOL, a division of Time Warner said it would buy the Swedish online ad broker TradeDoubler for a cool $900 million. And it won’t fly. According to multiple accounts, including the NYTimes, they need 90% shareholder approval and one company, a Swedish pension fund called Alecta, owns 10.1% and they want more money. Why does this matter?
Online ad buy has been growing by 25%/year in recent years and it just keeps growing. AOL, which recently made its service totally free as a portal for anyone willing to install the software, is placing itself in the market with Google, Yahoo, and others. For small businesses this is a good thing. AOL users tend to be family folk and people just a tad less techie. That’s a market you want to get to with most consumer products. And if AOL had a robust advertising engine built right in, you could effectively reach that market. Moreover, AOL forces users to create accounts, and therefor can safely collect demographic information on its users. Integrate that with an online ad system that also helps you get to the European market and you have a serious tool for targeted marketing.
Microsoft has been promising this kind of targeting in their new search engine but it’s not clear how they;ll get the information. With AOL we know. Also, because AOL is software you put on your computer users use it to access everything on the Internet. It’s a web browser that knows who you are because the only way to use it is to log on through it.
If not TradeDoubler, then hopefully some other system with a serious customer base will become part of AOL. The results could be great for your advertising dollar.
Listen to this report from MarketPlace.org to learn more about AOL and ads.
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