It’s official.
The future is here.

AOL and The Huffington Post believe the future of the Internet is dynamic brands, quality journalism and the positive influence of the world’s communities. Our partnership lays the foundation for a more beautiful, more useful online experience.

The Huffington Post joins a roster that includes some of the fastest-growing online video and local platforms, one of the web’s most popular homepages, and top influencer sites, including Engadget, Moviefone and TechCrunch.  With these assets, AOL is creating the web’s largest brand platform, enabling advertisers to reach an engaged, affluent and influential audience at a scale impossible elsewhere.

For both AOL and The Huffington Post, it's a merging of visions.  Something Arianna likes to call 1+1=11.  Hear it in her own words or do the math below:

AOL + The Huffington Post by the numbers:

• 117M combined unduplicated monthly UVs in the US, roughly 270M worldwide. 1
• Huffington Post 21% growth in 2010 – 3% more than Twitter and 13x faster than the Internet itself. 2
• AOL’s Project Devil ad unit (27 seconds more interaction than traditional display ads)3 plus The Huffington Post’s 3.5M+ comments per month4 equals great content and quality brand experiences – a benefit to both advertisers and consumers. 
• Both AOL and The Huffington Post significantly over-index in $100K+ income users. 5
• AOL video views up 400% year-over-year, more unique viewers than Hulu 4th Qtr. 2010. 6
  Source: 1,2comScore Media Metrix, January 2011; 3AOL Internal Data; 4Huffington Post Internal Data; 5comScore Media Metrix, January 2011; 6comScore Video Metrix, December 2010

1. Scale — Two homepages, one big effect
   Reach over 74.5M unique visitors each month on two of the web’s most well-known homepages, Huffingtonpost.com and AOL.com1.  By adding the Huffington Post, campaigns not only get more eyeballs, but access to one of the fastest growing properties online as well.
2. Influencers — Driving brand perception and purchase intent
   From political opinion leaders to early technology adopters, connect with the full spectrum of influencers with Engadget, Moviefone, TechCrunch and The Huffington Post.
3. Premium ad formats and experiences – Engagement drives loyalty
   Make unique connections to consumers with the award-winning Devil and Pictela ad formats and drive interaction for your brand with aggregated brand content modules and other innovative social ad products from The Huffington Post.
4. Sharing and interaction – Social is not just a platform
   Take advantage of the opportunity to fuel conversations with content, and make the most of The Huffington Post’s actively engaged audience.
5. Women – The audience that controls 85% of household spending
   Reach 85% of women online with the unique combined content of The Huffington Post and AOL Advertising. Engage with your audience in such diverse areas as lifestyle, politics, entertainment and travel.
   Source: 1,2 comScore Media Metrix, January 2011.

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Giving online advertising a makeover.

Project Devil and Pictela Pushdown have just been named winners of the IAB Rising Stars Ad Formats Competition. This award, a stamp on the future of display advertising, was selected from dozens of submissions by a panel of agency creative directors, media executives and ad operations specialists, who saw Devil and Pictela's potential to drive branding on the Web.  

These new IAB formats will be known as IAB Portrait (Devil) and IAB Pushdown (Pictela).  The numbers speak for themselves:

• Consumers spend an average of 27 extra seconds on a Portrait / Devil ad; they also play video 18 seconds longer.
• Pictela's award-winning Pushdown unit delivers - on average - a 440% increase in consumer interactions and a 338% increase in interaction time.
• Advertising.com reaches almost 90% of all U.S. internet users every month. It’s no wonder our advertisers trust and value their partnerships with Advertising.com.

To see examples of how these premium ad formats are delivering for brands online, check out the galleries for Project Devil and the Pictela Pushdown.  While Devil and Pictela are both available today via AOL, there will be a 90-day build-out period after which they will all be available at scale.  For additional information about all the IAB Rising Stars, including sizzle reels, style guides and reviews, visit: http://www.iab.net/risingstars

Thank you to our partners and the visionaries who  work with us to create a more beautiful and engaging web for consumers.  Environment Matters - and the Industry agrees.  AOL offers marketers the chance to engage with their consumers through premium ad formats, valuable audiences and leading engagement platforms.

We are also excited to announce that IAB has named Dave Jacobs,  SVP of Publisher Services at Advertising.com, as a winner in their annual Sales Excellence Awards. Dave’s leadership, insight and dedication to advancing the interactive advertising business are recognized with this distinguished award for his contribution to the Networks & Exchanges Quality Assurance guidelines.

To find out more about how environment matters to consumers and for your brand, we invite you to reach out to the CMO of Pictela, Matt Straz.

Influencers are a key audience for AOL – and no other event reaches a larger and more diverse group of influencers than SXSW.  For the second year in a row, AOL was a Super Sponsor, onsite for all three conference tracks: Interactive, Film and especially Music.  SXSW Music is known for breaking some of tomorrow’s hottest bands, and AOL was there to highlight and support all 2,000 of them.

In partnership with T-Mobile, AOL Music hosted 3 free pop-up concerts with indie favorites the Dodos, Bright Eyes and the Vaccines. Attracting thousands of fans in person and hundreds of thousands of viewers online, we delivered a valuable program that reached influencers across multiple platforms.

And again thanks to T-Mobile, all three shows were also available in real time, and on-demand with AOL’s new mobile app, PLAY by AOL Music and online at The Interface.  Over 137K people have downloaded Play by AOL Music, to date, and many more have streamed the videos online.

Missed all the fun? The SXSW hub on AOL Music still has all the free MP3s, videos, interviews and photos to make you feel like you were there and keep you busy until next year.

Branded Experiences
in the news.

This month AOL introduced new Branded Experience partnerships that provide exclusive opportunities for brands to reach two prime audiences - African Americans and teens/young adults. In addition, Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington and Heidi Klum graced the cover of The Hollywood Reporter in a story that explored AOL’s strategy and strong first steps in the Branded Experience space.

On the same day of the issue’s release, we were thrilled to announce an exclusive original web content partnership with Flavor Unit, the production company that represents Queen Latifah. This initiative aligns with our 80/80/80 strategy, engaging women and influencers as well as the multicultural audience that our brands want to reach. Flavor Unit will produce all content for an original web series, with deep brand integration, while Queen Latifah will serve as executive producer and star in select webisodes. The series will include round table discussions with a rotating cast of celebrities and athletes discussing hot topics in sports; think The View meets Sports Center. Queen Latifah’s programming will live on Black Voices, the No. 1 website for African-Americans, and one of AOL’s top sites that index Women between the ages of 25-54. The show is set to launch in June 2011.

A second partnership announced this month is with Mark Burnett Productions and CliffsNotes, launching be a series of animated, comedic short versions of the study guides themselves. The hip, irreverent webisodes, including such classics as Romeo and Juliet and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, will cover themes, characters, and plots while delivering humor and entertainment. They will live on Cambio, AOL’s teen and young adult site, and be surrounded by a full virtual ‘Student Lounge’ of social engagement, user interaction, merchandising, and more.

Please contact your seller for more information on these and other Branded Experience opportunities.

contact AOL SALES →

Impact NYC’s future leaders - just teach what you know!

AOL is a proud supporter of Citizen Schools, the educational non-profit organization that extends the learning day for low-income students and brings learning to life through interactions with professional employees at partner companies like AOL.  Employees teach their professional or personal passions and provide hands-on knowledge and experience to the kids over the course of a semester.

Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington recently spent the day at a Brooklyn middle school teaching a class on journalism, and now they’ve challenged our AOL employees to volunteer time for a cause within 30 days.

We’re looking for additional companies and individuals to inspire the young people of NYC and Boson to reach their full potential. Teach what you know, both in and out of the classroom!

If you’re interested in getting involved, please visit www.citizenschools.org or contact Blair Cobb via the link below:


Contact Blair Cobb →

Hear that?

AOL Voices is a video interview series that focuses on industry thought leaders and their stories, opinions, and histories in the business. Moderated by AOL advisor and Chairman Emeritus of the Interpublic Group, David Bell, Voices is a history lesson, rap session and look into the future with the people who’re shaping advertising.

What's new on Voices?

Andrew Robbertson on leadership, Trevor Kaufman on the next digital frontier, Matt Seiler on an effective brief and so much more. 

In addition to our current lineup, we have new videos ready to release and more planned. Keep checking back to see who’s talking with Voices.

Watch Videos Now →

Please feel free to send us your thoughts, questions and feedback. We look forward to an open and engaging dialogue!