Brand Name to Brand X, Y and Z
A Host of New AOL Sites Grab for an Ad Audience Anywhere

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2007; D01

AOL has begun flooding the Web with dozens of new and updated products, many of which do not even bear its famous name, in an attempt to expand its network and reach people wherever they may be.

With a partner, it runs edgy celebrity gossip site TMZ. It recently started Bluestring, a site that scours the Internet for one's photos, videos and music and stores them in one place online. And it has unveiled a video search engine called Truveo used by Microsoft's Web sites, the technology portal CNet and others.

These sites and services and many others are part of an overhaul of AOL's vast online empire, a largely overlooked yet key element of the Internet giant's transformation into an advertising company. The products represent the company's attempt to capture a larger share of the online audience in a heated contest with traditional rivals Google, Yahoo and MSN, as well as newcomers such as Facebook.

In this new world, the AOL brand is no longer as important as it once was.

"You want to be there whether you're branded or not," said Kevin Conroy, executive vice president for products at AOL.

AOL has steadily abandoned its roots as a provider of dial-up Internet access that hoarded much of its proprietary content behind a subscriber wall. Now AOL is looking to feature its products on the sites of rivals and open its AOL.com portal and other properties to outsiders. With these efforts, the company is trying to build on the earlier success of such stand-alone siblings as Moviefone, MapQuest and Winamp, an iTunes forerunner. The AIM instant message system has long dominated the market.

But the collective audience for AOL sites has not grown recently. Since August 2006, the number of users visiting AOL sites monthly has declined slightly and now is about 111 million, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

Analysts say future growth depends on attracting eyeballs from elsewhere online.

"When it comes down to these products, Google's making strides, Yahoo's making strides. AOL has fallen into the background," said Sarah Cohen, an analyst with Forrester Research. "As consumers become more comfortable with the Internet and learn about their options, they stray from AOL. AOL is now in a place where they need to win back consumers."

AOL executives say their new products attempt to capitalize on an Internet that is rapidly becoming a mix of feeds, blogs, widgets, profile pages, user-created content and other elements that are collectively regarded as Web 2.0.

"It's really about getting a piece of the usage," said Conroy, who is leading the new strategy from his office in Dulles. "You don't just steal someone from that environment and say, 'Come here.' You want to be part of the social fabric."

With its headquarters moving from Dulles to New York and its recent acquisitions of several online ad companies, AOL has received plenty of attention for its plans to become an Internet advertising company. AOL claims its ad network, known as Platform A, offers more opportunities to serve ads on the Web than any other company. And it says the new approach will be key to reversing the company's public, painful decline as users have migrated away from its access business.

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."