Comments on: AOL’s Web Strategy Refined Yet Again With MediaGlow

By: Werther

Werther — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:50:06 +0000

It is painfully clear to everyone at AOL and in the industry that the pageview growth at AOL has come at the expense of a good user experience. Nearly all of the increases in the last two years have been driven by an insane number of new photo galleries. These galleries are like candy – taste good but they're empty calories. What Wilson and Grant(they crafted this optics play together) have done is essentially dilute the inventory and blame Platform A and Clarizio for the cpm decline and overall revenue falloff. Wilson has said "I did my job- PVs are up, UVs are steady. now you just need to sell"). Fact is he actually accelerated the revenue decline just by flooding the market with impressions to make himself look good. The lower AOL cpms got, the harder it became to sell em since they became viewed as less premium and less in demand- as more and more empty calories were created cpms fell further. You get the picture. Grant was in WAY over his head. Wilson is all about Wilson and way more sizzle than steak.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 18:19:57 +0000

Eric: In 2006, AOL lost 20 Billion Page Views from the prior year. In 2007, the Page View loses were stabilized and in 2008 the Page Views grew double digits driven by the 20 new brands. Also worth noting the content costs were much higher in 2005 & 2006 and thus although advertising revenue has been suffering the operating margins in 2008 was much stronger then in the past years.

By: eric

eric — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:48:11 +0000

I love this…Wilson, Grant and Falco taking credit for Miller and Bankoff's programing strategy. I think if you look at the origin on niche programming, it started under Miller and Bankoff with TMZ, Personal Finance, Kids, WebBlogs, the HBO comedy thing that didn't work.

The real achievement here, is that they are touting in their press release growth in pageviews and visitors…however, their revenue is down 18%! When Miller and Bankoff did this, they grew advertising revenue by 46%, even taking into account the economy…a 64% swing in two years to the negative is terrible!