AOL Announces Premium Formats for Smartphones and Tablets – Powered by Pictela

Project Devil Now Across Three Screens; Simplifying Premium Advertising for Brand Marketers

NEW YORK – AOL announced the launch of Premium Formats for Mobile, the expansion of beautiful, engaging, content-rich ad formats to smartphones and tablets. This announcement of the expanded offering for brand marketers comes just eighteen months after the launch of Project Devil for desktop in September 2010. These app-based ads will be powered by the award-winning Pictela technology. AOL will discuss its current mobile strategy, including the announcement of Premium Formats for Mobile, at a client summit today at its New York office.

“We’re thrilled to announce the extension of our Premium Formats suite to the smartphone and tablet,” said Greg Rogers, Senior Vice President, Premium Formats and CEO of Pictela. “The challenge for marketers has been a disparate workflow across devices. Today we are simplifying premium digital advertising and offering marketers the ability to serve the same brand content experience across multiple devices.” Rogers added, “Moving forward we will continue to innovate across additional screens and formats, thus simplifying both work-flow and reporting for the entire media plan.”

Mobile Premium Formats are built using applications similar to those currently available for the desktop. Each ad unit includes three apps. At launch, the top five applications for an advertiser to choose from are:

• Photo Gallery – Allows advertisers to tell their brand story through beautiful, high-quality images of products or messages. Up to nine images can be featured in a carousel that can be swiped through to see the next image.
• Video Gallery – Displays stunning HD content and provides advertisers with another platform to utilize TV spots and other video content that has already been produced.
• Content feed – Advertisers can include proprietary feeds to highlight company news and updates for consumers.
• Facebook feed – Displays content from a brand’s Facebook page in a scrollable-list to provide real-time conversation updates.
• Twitter feed – Displays content from a brand’s account or a chosen hash-tag in a scrollable-list to provide real-time conversation updates.

Additional apps will be incorporated into this mobile offering in the coming weeks. Similar to the desktop browser experience, every high-definition experience within the ad unit can be navigated without leaving the page. The functionality takes into account the tactile nature of mobile devices, and allows users to swipe and tap to see more content which can be updated instantly during a campaign.

Advertising inventory will be available across AOL’s Owned & Operated mobile web properties and apps, as well as across third party mobile inventory through Advertising.com. This technology is available for iOS 4.0+ and Android 2.2+ in the U.S. and Canada.

About AOL:

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is a brand company, committed to continuously innovating, growing, and investing in brands and experiences that inform, entertain, and connect the world. The home of a world-class collection of premium brands, AOL creates original content that engages audiences on a local and global scale. We help marketers connect with these audiences through effective and engaging digital advertising solutions.

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