
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-se
crets
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.
Contact Info: Alysia Lew
AOL (212) 652-6376 Alysia.Lew@corp.aol.com |