SEO Agency in Maryland Responds to AOL Move and Platform A

In big industry and local Baltimore / Philly / DC metro news, AOL announced yesterday that it will be moving its headquarters from Dulles, Virginia to 770 Broadway, New York City. AOL’s announcement comes as a result of their plan to realign the company from a subscription to an ad network model. We polled media buyers and the agency’s president, Hollis Thomases, to see what they thought of the recent news.

AOL campus in Virginia and new digs in New York City.

Of course no one was surprised by the news that AOL would be moving towards the bigger fish of an ad-supported business model. We’d all been watching as AOL snatched up Baltimore-based Advertising.com in 2004 for $435 million in cash, behavioral advertising company Tacoda, and other media and ad networks. Said Web Ad.vantage President & CEO, Hollis Thomases, ”Dial-up is dead and if AOL didn’t evolve into an ad-based company, they would perish along with the original service they built their base on. By all indications, web advertising is hot and NYC *IS* “the” center of the ad industry. It’s a logical move.”

In addition, our media buyer Stacy Smith had this to say, “Since AOL’s search market share sits at around #5 - almost on level with MSN - they’ve really struggled with generating online ad sales and search advertising revenue. I’m actually surprised they hadn’t turned their focus sooner.”

So will the realignment plump AOL’s search revenue coffers? We all agree that if the move comes with more focus on staffing, manpower, and talent AOL could easily surpass MSN’s search ad revenue since they’re currently about on par and AOL has the benefit of a larger user base. In addition, Media Buyer, Pat Carroll predicts that in the long run AOL may also cut more significantly into some of the search advertising revenues of Yahoo! and Google. It will be interesting to see if AOL makes a stronger play in the search field now that they’ve cut loose the dead weight of their subscription service.

One thing that we locals have to consider is the impact that AOL’s move will have on our metro economy and tech focus. AOL’s position is to say that most of their 4,000 employees will remain in Dulles but The Washington Post’s WashBizBlog wonders if the AOL move might spark a jump ship mentality at the company. And of course, no matter how many employees stay in VA, we’re still losing the AOL headquarters. Since Web Ad.vantage is located in Havre de Grace, Maryland, Dulles Virginia might seem a little too far away to impact us. However, AOL acquisition, Advertising.com is headquartered in Baltimore and though the Baltimore Business Journal says Advertising.com will stay headquartered in Baltimore, a major move like this may have subtle impacts on the tech industry’s strength in the region.

In addition to the move, AOL has announced the launch of a their new advertising product, Platform A. From the official AOL press release:

The new entity, called Platform A, will offer advertisers access to the most sophisticated targeting and measurement tools available in the marketplace across Platform A’s unmatched network of third-party sites, as well as AOL’s owned and operated sites. Platform A already reaches more than 90% of the domestic online audience, according to comScore Media Metrix. Platform A builds on the success of Advertising.com, which operates the largest third-party display network, and integrates behavioral targeting leader TACODA, Third Screen Media, which operates the largest mobile media network, market leading video ad serving platform Lightningcast, and ADTECH’s global ad serving platform.

If Platform A takes hold, it promises to be a powerhouse of an ad network combining some of the most cutting edge advertising modes currently available from behavioral targeting to video and mobile advertising. One caveat that comes up when anyone discusses behavioral advertising is concerns about privacy rights. No one is probably more an expert in the sensitivity of the Internet community with regard to privacy than AOL. Thomases had this to say, “Having been thoroughly and publicly thrashed in August 2006 when AOL released user search data, the fact that the company is still around might be a testament to their ability to negotiate the concerns that arise as behavioral targeting becomes more and more prominent in advertising networks.”

We’re all pretty curious to see how Platform A will compete with the current major ad networks and I for one am wondering what Google and Yahoo! might have up their sleeves in the future as they too have been acquiring several ad networks and media companies.

Advertisers keep an eye out, there’s a new player on the block.

Our SEO Agency in Maryland provides Search Engine Optimization services nationwide. Contact Web Ad.vantage today using our online Request for Proposal form, or call us at (410) 942-0488 to discuss how we can help you meet your business objectives.

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