For AOL, Ads Are Still A Minus

from the missteps-come-back-to-haunt-you dept

I have a friend who works for a company that has advertised with AOL for many years. He recently returned from a trip to their headquarters and the first thing he said was what a change it was from a few years ago. He said they used to be impossible to deal with, and completely arrogant - since, after all, they were AOL and anyone else was a nothing. Now, however, they were bending over backwards to be friendly. It appears that AOL's reputation as an arrogant and obnoxious dealmaker is coming back to haunt the company. While others, such as Yahoo and the New York Times are reporting that ad revenue is picking up, AOL's ad revenue is dropping quickly. Many think that it's payback for AOL's old arrogance. Companies are refusing to work with them. Of course, the size of their market is still keeping some advertisers coming back. The other problem mentioned is that AOL's advertising platform is based on technology that is 10-years-old, and doesn't offer the same flexibility as regular web advertising. While not mentioned in the article, I wonder how much of the loss of advertising will be blamed on their decision to stop using third-party pop up ads.

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