AOL Sites Break Traffic Records in March

Programming Channel Redesign and New Launches Produce Six Consecutive Months of Growth; Platform-A Ranked No. 1 Ad Network

New York, NY.– AOL’s programming sites hit an all-time high in March, after growing steadily for six consecutive months in both unique visitors and page views, according to data from comScore Media Metrix*. In March, page views on AOL’s programming sites grew 28%, and they are up 35% year over year, with unique visitors climbing 11% year over year to 56.5 million. In addition, comScore ranked AOL’s Platform-A as the No. 1 advertising network, based on unique visitors.

“Our strong growth is a direct result of rebuilding each and every one of our vertical web sites over the past 12 months with the goal of providing consumers highly relevant and rich experiences that focus on key passion points which in turn provide tremendous value to our advertising partners,” said Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President of AOL Vertical Programming. “The consistent and strong growth in both reach and engagement, along with the newly reorganized Platform-A, gives us a great opportunity moving forward to monetize our increasingly highly engaged audience.”

Over the past year, AOL redesigned all of its key verticals, including Money & Finance, http://money.aol.com, News, http://news.aol.com, Sports, http://sports.aol.com, Health, http://body.aol.com/, Food, http://food.aol.com/, Music, http://music.aol.com/, Games, http://www.games.com/ and Moviefone, http://moviefone.com. Almost every major AOL vertical site has climbed in page views year over year, including: Body (760%), Home (475%), Food (319%), Living (241%), Moviefone (192%), Latino (165%)**, Sports (148%), Real Estate (94%), TMZ (79%), BlackVoices (65%), Music (55%), Television (24%), Money & Finance (24%), and News (20%).

AOL has also successfully launched many new sites in the past year, including Asylum.com, http://asylum.com, which has climbed to the No. 1 spot in the Men’s category just three months after launch, WalletPop.com, http://walletpop.com, focused on personal finance consumer news, Spinner.com, http://spinner.com, a music site for indie fans and PopEater.com, http://popeater.com, for fans of pop music and culture, etc. AOL most recently launched Urlesque.com – a daily blog highlighting the best new and viral content across the web -- and the AOL Technology Network, which brings together AOL’s fast-growing tech blogs, including the leading Engadget, Switched, EngadgetMobile, EngadgetHD, TUAW and DownloadSquad.

Many AOL sites are now leaders in their categories. For example, AIM, MapQuest, AOL Music, AOL Television, Black Voices, StyleList, TMZ and Asylum are No. 1 in their respective categories, based on unique visitors, with AOL Money & Finance, Real Estate, Moviefone, Women, Health and AOL Latino in the top three.

According to comScore, Platform-A was the No. 1 advertising network, reaching 170,537 million unique visitors in March, or close to 91% of all domestic online users. Yahoo reached 85% and Google 81%, according to the report.

* comScore Media Metrix numbers measured from March 1 to March 31, 2008.
** comScore categories BlackVoices, Latino, StyleList and Asylum are custom built based on a self selected competitor list.