Content Sites Saw Double-Digit Advertiser Growth; AOL Launched More Than 20 New Sites in 2008
NEW YORK- AOL’s programming sites continued to see strong growth in November, extending year-over-year growth in unique visitors to 22 consecutive months, according to the November 2008 comScore Media Metrix report. The announcement culminates a year of aggressive expansion and investment in AOL’s programming group, which included the launch in 2008 of more than 20 new sites in key areas such as finance, entertainment, women’s lifestyle and men’s interests.
Unique visitors to AOL’s programming content sites grew 3% year-over-year to 54 million in November. In addition, page views climbed 66% year-over-year to 3.8 billion and engagement (total minutes) grew 33% year-over-year in November, showing AOL consumers are actively engaging with the sites. Advertising revenues on AOL’s programming sites have had double-digit growth year-over-year in Q3 2008.
In addition, the recently completely redesigned AOL.com, which opened the site to third-party content, e-mail, social networks and more, grew 14% in page views, 13% in unique visitors and 29% in total minutes, year-over-year.
“2008 has been a truly successful and historic year for AOL Programming,” said Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President, AOL Programming. “Our programming strategy is working, as evidenced by both our strong and consistent comScore results and the double-digit revenue growth we’ve experienced on our content sites. We’re providing unique value to our users and advertising partners, and we’re in one of the top positions in nearly every important programming category. In addition, we reinvented the portal with the successful launch of the new aol.com. We are well positioned for the coming year and look forward to continuing our momentum with additional sites aimed at consumers’ passions, major enhancements to AOL.com and creating premium and relevant solutions for advertisers.”
To lean into the audience fragmentation on the Web and focus on consumer passion points, AOL has over the past two years launched a total of more than 30 sites targeted at specific interests, and several of these sites already rank number one in their categories, according to the November 2008 comScore Media Metrix report* including:
* #1 Country Music Site: TheBoot, http://theboot.com, 5.9 million UVs in November
* #1 Hip-Hop Music: The BoomBox, http://theboombox.com , 2.3 million UVs in November
* #1 Men: Asylum, http://asylum.com, 3.3 million UVs in November
* #1 Style: StyleList, http://stylelist.com, 4.5 million UVs in November
* #1 Women’s Blogs: Lemondrop, http://www.lemondrop.com, 3.3 million UVs in November
In addition to the strong traffic to new sites, many of AOL’s channels continue to appear in the top five of their categories for unique visitors, according to the November 2008 comScore Media Metrix report:
* #1 African American: BlackVoices, http://blackvoices.com,
* #1 Maps: MapQuest, http://mapquest.com
* #1 Music: Music, http://music.aol.com
* #1 Retail- Tickets: Moviefone.com, http://moviefone.com
* #1 Television: Television, http://television.aol.com
* #1 IM: AIM, http://www.aim.com
* #2 Horoscopes: Horoscopes, http://horoscopes.aol.com
* #2 Latino: Latino, http://latino.aol.com
* #2 Business- News/Research: Money & Finance, http://money.aol.com
* #2 Entertainment-News: TMZ, http://tmz.com
* #2 Email: AOL Email, http://webmail.aol.com
* #3 Real Estate: Real Estate, http://realestate.aol.com
* #3 Health: Health, http://aolhealth.com
* #4 News: News, http://news.aol.com
* #4 Technology: AOL Tech, http://switched.com
* #4 Yellow Pages: AOL Yellow Pages, http://yellowpages.aol.com
* #4 Women’s: AOL Living, http://living.aol.com
* #5 Search: Search Network, http://search.aol.com
* #5 Local: AOL Local, http://cityguide.aol.com
* #5 Weather: AOL Weather, http://weather.aol.com
* #5 Email: AIM Mail, http://webmail.aim.com
* #5 Home: AOL Home, http://home.aol.com
AOL’s also experienced growth in its product offerings. For example, AOL’s leading video search engine, Truveo, saw year-over-year increases of 264% in unique visitors and 289% in pages views according to the November 2008 comScore Media Metrix report.
AOL also recently featured several new integrated advertising campaigns on the content sites as well as on AOL.com:
* Chili’s on AOL Music’s Sessions: http://music.aol.com/sessions/latest
* Walmart on AOL Living’s Holidays: http://living.aol.com/holidays/
* Procter & Gamble on AOL Living’s Morning Rush: http://living.aol.com/morning-rush
* Campbell’s Soup on AOL Food: http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight
* Target on the Holidash blog: http://www.holidash.com/
* GMC on AOL Living’s Trade Secrets http://living.aol.com/gmc-trade-secrets
As part of its transformation to an ad-supported Web business, AOL has redesigned its entire lineup of content vertical sites over the past two years, including those focused on finance, sports, news and lifestyle.
* Categories for Asylum, BlackVoices, Horoscopes, Latino, Lemondrop, TheBoomBox, TheBoot and StyleList have been custom built by AOL.
About AOL
AOL is a global Web services company that operates some of the most popular Web destinations, offers a comprehensive suite of free software and services, runs one of the largest Internet access businesses in the U.S., and provides a full set of advertising solutions. A majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., AOL LLC and its subsidiaries have operations in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. Learn more at AOL.com.
