AOL rises again?
AOL, once the world’s largest Internet service provider, was done in by a variety of factors, including the failure to adjust to the rise of broadband. After an upcoming spinoff from its ill-fated merger with Time Warner, AOL will still live but as a different type of company. Saul Hansell writes at the New York Times about the plans of AOL’s new chief executive, Tim Armstrong:
Mr. Armstrong wants AOL to think big again. Three months after leaving a senior job as Google’s president of advertising sales, he is formulating his ambitious recovery plan for AOL. He wants to make AOL the biggest creator of premium content on the Web and the largest seller of online display advertising.
Can AOL rise again? Hansell notes:
Nine and a half years after Steve Case combined the company with Time Warner, AOL suffers from myriad problems. It has long since lost the mantle of king of the Internet to Mr. Armstrong’s former employer, Google. It has suffered through wrenching waves of mass layoffs, management turmoil and constant bickering with its corporate parent. Time Warner plans to shed the unit by year end. Meanwhile, AOL struggles with the prospect of fading into irreversible irrelevance, a collection of tired brands for a shrinking core of customers hanging on mainly because they are too lazy to change their AOL.com e-mail addresses.
So what’s the plan for the new AOL?
Mr. Armstrong’s plan is to compete directly with Yahoo, Microsoft and Google to become the dominant network for display ads. Mr. Armstrong says the company’s technology, with the data it has on millions of consumers accumulated over nearly 25 years, will give it an edge.
Armstrong also wants AOL to be a big producer of content:
The combination of specialized content and display advertising, he said, should make AOL appealing to large consumer products companies with big marketing budgets like Procter & Gamble.
P&G is a long way from Aunt Matilda in Dubuque listening for “You’ve got mail”.
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