Blogs

Advertising Week, the premier annual gathering of the advertising community, got under way in New York today, and AOL was on the ground and in the news. We announced the launch of Project Devil 2, the next phase of AOL's continued focus on innovation in premium branded display, as well as a new partnership with YouTube that will bring our entire original video content library to 22 curated channels on their site. Tim Armstrong delivered a Keynote Conversation at OMMA Global, while our Virtual Concierge, ViC, helped attendees navigate Ad Week from the Liberty Theatre. Learn more about the first day of Advertising Week by reading our Storify recap below:

Today kicks off New York Advertising Week, which is one of the most important and exciting weeks of the year here at AOL, and which is why I’m particularly excited to share some very significant news.  As many of you know, video has been a key part of our overall strategy over the last few years, and since launching The AOL On Network in April of this year, we’ve seen tremendous traction in the marketplace. In August, our reach surpassed 60M unique visitors for the first time ever, and we were ranked #1 in the Auto, Business, Style, Home, Health, Travel, Technology and Food categories.

Today AOL kicked off Advertising Week 2012 with the launch of Project Devil 2, the next phase of AOL's continued focus on innovation in premium branded display.

Project Devil, launched in September 2010 at Advertising Week, was AOL's foray into revolutionizing premium display on the Web. Since then, the Devil unit has continued to delive routstanding metrics for marketers, including an average Interaction Rate (ITR) of 5.18% and an average Interaction Time of 24 seconds.*

After two years of working with advertisers across categories including Entertainment, Retail, CPG, Finance, and Travel, we realized that each industry has very unique needs in branded display. We have been working with the various verticals to create real solutions for their needs.

Keywords: devil 2.0, display, innovate, project devil

AOL is committed to continuously innovating, growing and investing in brands and providing a vibrant experience for both advertiser and consumer. Next week our company’s top voices will be sharing their expertise about our brand at Advertising Week IX.

Think it's getting hot in here? That's because the first ever Devil Awards are open for voting!

As AOL’s Project Devil turns two and the Devil Network continues to blaze a trail across the web, it's time to celebrate the best of the best in one hell of a competition! 

Now it's up to you to vote for which brand you think should be crowned the Most Beautiful Ad, Most Engaging Ad, Best Pages to Parking Lots Ad and the Smartest Devil Ad.

The AOL Sales team has submitted what they think are the best ads in the following categories, and now we're opening it up to the public to decide who should be crowned:

Most Beautiful Ad: The best use of image and video galleries hosting eye-catching photos and videos

Most Engaging Ad: The best use of interactive ad elements like hotspots, quizzes and polls

Best Supporting Devil: The best use of Devil ad units in a larger campaign

Best Pages to Parking Lots: The ad unit that best sends users to offline commerce with the online ad campaign

Frank Besteiro, Head of Business Development and Partnerships for The AOL On Network, was recently chosen as a contributor on Venture Beat.

In his article “The Four Most Common Online Video Blunders (and how to avoid them),” Mr. Besteiro states that winning big in the video industry relies heavily on having a solid strategy. It is no longer enough to have great content, but it is also important to make sure that the videos are getting views through marketing and distribution. Mr. Besteiro concludes the article with a list of the four biggest blunders seen in the video space and how to avoid them.

Keywords: The AOL On Network

AOL’s Big Mobile Study set out to understand the complex relationship consumers have with their mobile devices.

We went into the exercise with hypotheses that were validated: such as the power of word of mouth.  And some hypotheses were refuted: bad apps don’t drive users to the mobile web (Guess what? they just move on to another app).

Ten themes shone through:

Keywords: aol mobile, research

Homepage for Heroes relaunched today with the new goal of creating opportunity for our troops.

Homepage for Heroes partnered with Hire Heroes USA and AOL Jobs to give veterans tools and skills to use as they adjust to the civilian workplace after their time of service. On the site, veterans will find resume examples for each division of the military. Thanks to the editors at AOL Jobs, veterans will also find an article each day exploring topics like modernizing the resume and the best employers for veterans. AOLers who come to AOLHeroes.com will be encouraged to set their homepage to AOL.com for a chance to win their own laptop – a key job searching tool. AOL will also be donating a mobile computer lab (eight laptops in all) to Hire Heroes USA to aid veterans in their job search.

Keywords: aol homepages

PR News, a weekly that covers trends and programs in PR and communications, announced finalists in its upcoming Digital PR Awards, and AOL earned two nominations.

AOL's Homepage for Heroes, our yearlong project to recognize, honor and support our troops, is a contender in the Microsite/Custom Site category. Meanwhile, AOL's TOMS One Day Without Shoes 100,000 Voices Challenge, which reached over 1,000,000 people with the ODWS message, placed in the Cause Marketing/Corporate Social Responsibility category.

Keywords: awards, Homepage For Heroes, PR Newswire, toms one day without shoes

This week, the AOL Premium Formats and Retail Sales teams attended the 2012 ShopLocal conference in Chicago. This year’s theme, “Reimagine Retail,” highlighted the many ways customers can interact with retailers in and out of the stores.

Vikram Sharma, CEO of ShopLocal, set the stage Tuesday morning when he opened up his presentation with a video of late Steve Jobs’ iconic unveiling of the iPhone. He said retailers and advertisers should make a point to create “[advertising] Steve Jobs would be proud of.”

As consumers become more and more technologically savvy with new tools like  mobile apps and social media sites, retailers must embrace this new generation of empowered customers and harness these tools to give them the best experience possible.

Brian Atwood, VP of AOL Advertising Product Sales, introduced the new Premium Circular app that runs in our Devil ad units and are available to ShopLocal retailers. The ad automatically pulls in the ShopLocal circular feed to highlight the weekly deals in a user-centric Devil ad unit. Retailers can pair this with our 20+ applications popular with retail advertisers to achieve a variety of objectives.

To learn more about the Premium Circular application, contact us at info@pictela.com.

Keywords: Events