AOL’s New Homepage Delivers Strong Branding and Performance for Platform-A Advertisers

Click-through rate increases 30% since the AOL.com relaunch; November total unique visitors and average daily visitors up 13%, and total minutes online grew by 29%; all figures signal higher advertiser returns moving into 2009

New York, NY . – AOL’s Platform-A announced that the new AOL.com homepage is delivering advertisers record performance on their homepage advertising and is also driving increased consumer reach and engagement. Since the homepage redesign was launched in September 2008, advertising click-through rates on the primary 300x250 ad banner rose 30%, according to internal metrics, a double-digit increase that shows consumers are increasingly clicking on AOL.com homepage advertising. In addition, the redesign is driving stronger consumer usage: total unique visitors and average daily visitors each are up 13% and total minutes grew by 29%, compared to one year ago, according to the November 2008 comScore Media Metrix Report.

“This week, the new homepage was rolled out to all AOL.com users, so we anticipate that our consumer usage numbers will continue to grow in the coming year,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A. “Even in a tough economy, advertisers are finding ways to maximize their returns on investment, and our AOL.com homepage ad units have proven that consumers will respond positively to brand messaging within a new, highly customized consumer environment.”

The increased advertising performance comes with the AOL.com homepage relaunch that debuted in September with a new feature that allowed consumers to access multiple e-mail locations from AOL.com, including Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and AIM Mail. In October, AOL introduced other features that let consumers access various social networking services from the homepage, becoming the first major portal to offer direct access to information from social networking sites. In addition, AOL.com introduced a new 300 x 600 ad space on the front page.

Late last year, Platform-A was established by combining AOL’s advertising business, Advertising.com, TACODA, and Quigo to provide marketers with an efficient, effective means to leverage display, video, mobile, contextual, affiliate and search marketing solutions. The mission of Platform-A is to make it easier for marketers to build their audiences, drive scale, and achieve growth in a fragmented market.

To date, Platform-A has fully integrated its sales forces, and developed one insertion order and other processes to streamline ad buying. In addition, Platform-A has accelerated its product development efforts with recent launches that include Spot Marketplace, which enables advertisers to bid on nonreserved inventory across AOL’s Web sites; PubAccess, a self-service interface enabling Web sites to place their inventory for sale in Platform-A’s third party display network; audience targeting across Platform-A; and the creation of a 300 x 600 ad unit across AOL’s homepages and co-branded sites.