Brand Name to Brand X, Y and Z

But the advertising strategy relies, in large measure, on the products strategy. The bulk of AOL's audience and ad dollars comes from traffic on sites it owns.

It wants to expand that universe by remaking its existing sites and adding new ones. Just yesterday, the company was touting how it turned an acquisition into a new finance site, at money.aol.com.

The company revamped its portal to allow users to receive e-mail, instant messages and relevant updates from various sites on one page. The portal also includes a quirky new service called Mgnet that scouts the Web for photos, stories, and videos users might enjoy based on their preferences. Users click on images that represent their interests, and the service creates a page of relevant information.

Beyond that mainstay, much of the new strategy involves services and products that don't prominently feature the AOL brand. A joint venture with Telepictures Productions, TMZ is the top gossip site on the Web, according to ComScore, with more than 10 million unique visitors in October. Yesterday's headlines included "Ballroom Battle of the Sexes" and "Britney, Please, Leave Chris Crocker Alone!" The only clue to its parent is a small "AOL News" logo at the top of the page and a few tiny links to AOL sites. Another popular site is Black Voices, the top destination for African American content, which has almost no mention of AOL.

AOL has bought Userplane, a Los Angeles start-up that focuses on providing chat software to other sites, and it has a plug-in for Facebook that lets friends know when a user is online. Redskins fans can get free e-mails with the address @Ultimateredskinsfan.com through AOL.

The two most ambitious elements of the new product strategy are Bluestring and Truveo. Bluestring was built on the idea that there are some sites that host photos, videos or music, but none that hosts and presents all three well. Truveo, meanwhile, was created on the theory that Google does a good job searching the Web for text, YouTube does a fine job at hosting video, but neither is effective at searching the Web for videos.

Truveo and Bluestring were created by small teams in California, based on acquisitions the company had made. Both look to integrate content from other sites. Soon, Bluestring will import media stored on Facebook and Yahoo's Flickr photo service.

"Instead of saying, 'Here's a brand new thing, but you have to move your assets to it,' we're saying, 'If you already have your assets online, we'll do the work of surfacing it,' " said Robert Blatt, a vice president who oversees Bluestring.

Some of the new products are designed to exploit the capabilities of the ad companies AOL has recently bought. The company spent more than $1 billion this year to buy online ad companies specializing in niches such as sending ads to cellphones or serving ads based on the sites a user visits.

"How we monetize is now relevant," said David Liu, senior vice president for AOL.

Yet there is still work to be done. Its advertising revenue growth is not robust. And popular new products like Truveo, which is already garnering 40 million unique visitors a month, still lack an advertising strategy.

"This is a new market," said Tim Tuttle, founder of Truveo, which was acquired by AOL in late 2005. "At some point in the future we'll certainly turn to advertising on the site that best matches the needs of the user."