MarcPorcelli.com

AOL Buys Bebo.com and Google Ad Manager

AOL has sure had its share of news this week. Today came the announcement that they had purchased social networking site, Bebo.com. Bebo has some 40 million users worldwide with its strengths lying in the UK. The acquisition closed for some $850 million dollars. We’ll have to see how this pans out with the Yahoo merger rumors. There was a great piece today about Yahoo and potential sale/merger rumors and the importance of their Q1 results. Talk about pressure! I won’t even touch on the rumors about Disney potentially acquiring AOL, but some suspect this may also be on the table.

changes again, but to make an acquisition of this size at this time? I don’t know how any of the executives can be focused on turning the company around when they keep buying companies that are very unrelated to what traditionally the organization does. Coupled into the mix of today’s news that half of AOL’s sales force will be cut! I can’t say it’s a surprise that cuts are coming to AOL again, but the timing is brutal. Hopefully AOL’s master plan will all come to fruition soon as their inventory is appealing.

Also rumored to be cutting employees is Google, now that the DoubleClick acquisition has officially closed. Comparatively speaking, Ad Manager is of much greater importance.

Someone at Google clearly is a fan of Wired magazine and reads articles by Chris Anderson, in particular this month cover story Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.

Google Ad Manager would allow for publishers to manage their online ad sales and serve up ads each time a consumer pulls up a web page. The best part about the service is that it’s free! Google would make its money in hopes (a nice way of putting it) that publishers will agree to carry some Google or DoubleClick ads into rotation for placements that Ad Manager serves. Google would then take their cut from ads sold. What is not clear is if that cut from the ads are from Google ads or all ads served? Based on the technical implications, one would assume the cut would only be from ads that are associated with a publishers AdSense account.

Like most of what Google does these days, Ad Manager will have a significant affect on the online advertising space. I think this is a great tool to offer publishers, particularly with the DoubleClick acquisition and Google’s focus on expansion with the content network. Perhaps the greatest value of this product will be its attractiveness towards smaller publishers. This opens up, or should I say complements Google’s efforts to allow for smaller publishers to monetize their traffic further.

Marketing executives at agencies, ad and affiliate network will find this very appealing. Agencies and networks could in theory allow for their offers that take contextual and web traffic to be distributed through Ad Manager readily. Perhaps Ad Manager will offer API integration as well? Offers that pay on a CPM, CPC or CPA with the right-targeted users could convert well for both the publisher and advertiser. Basically Ad Manager is great for anyone that is not in the ad serving business.

The fact that Google is releasing this product shows their confidence in the DoubleClick acquisition. Furthermore it exemplifies Google’s confidence in getting publishers to run offers directly through them.

I will definitely be keeping my eye on Ad Manager. This is a product that has significant potential, more on this in future posts.