AOL Company Analysis - Mobile Ad Strategy Fuels America Onlines Renaissance  

• America Online (AOL), once the leading Internet service provider, is rejuvenating its flailing brand by expanding its portfolio of products and services, recruiting talented leadership, and moving assertively to capture market share in the burgeoning mobile advertising industry
• AOL recently decided to discontinue its Platform-A brand and will house all of its advertising functions under the aegis of AOL Advertising. This unit will include the company's premium ad sales on its owned properties, its Advertising.com third-party advertising network, and its AdTech advertising server operations.
• AOL's growing suite of products and services builds on its core competencies in the buy-side and sell side of media. While a merged AOL/Time Warner continuously bolsters its presence in print and online publishing, the company is making great strides in unconventional media solutions, including mobile.
• AOL's rebranding of Platform A into AOL Advertising is a smart move for the beleaguered advertising network that will immediately boost AOL's presence in the mobile space. Behind the strength of the AOL name, AOL Advertising is poised to offer brand managers a unique mobile display and mobile search advertising cadre of solutions with the extensive reach of AOL's network.
• AOL's long-term challenge is to stave off the accelerated efforts of Google and Bing within the mobile space, particularly mobile local search. Although Google, MSN, Yahoo, and America Online dominate the white label search and content aggregator supply side, Mind Commerce expects that Google will emerge as the dominant search platform through 2012 when Microsoft has had ample time to innovate Bing into a fierce enough white label competitor.

Target Audience:
 
Media Buyers at Marketing and Advertising Agencies, and Corporate Marketing Departments: Chief Marketing and Advertising Executives are determining how best to allocate their budgets for 2010 and mobile is certainly on their radar
 
Mobile advertising networks: The suppliers enable different types of mobile ads to be broadcast over mobile networks, in videos, and in other mobile premium content
 
Mobile search and content aggregators: Many are chasing Google but the smaller vendors offer localized search capabilities 
 
Cellular phone providers: They carry the millions of text messages, some of them sponsored, and are looking at ways to leverage mobile marketing campaign data for their own use
 
Mobile platform developers: These suppliers create videos, games, downloadable applications for mobile that they in turn use to recruit sponsorship opportunities. 
 
Traditional media outlets: Broadcast television stations and Internet properties are leveraging mobile to stream newscasts and other premium content
 
Smartphone and PDA manufacturers: They provide the hardware that enable next-generation mobile content possible