AOL bought Third Screen Media, a mobile advertising company in February 2007. The price was not disclosed, but rumor has it that they paid about $80 million. Third Screen Media was rolled into AOL’s Platform-A division, the same unit that runs Advertising.com and PubAccess. Now there is another rumor floating around that Third Screen Media is not making as much money as they had hoped so they’ll end up scaling back the service or shut it down completely.
Rather than focusing on brokering advertising on mobile devices, AOL has strength in building mobile content. According to Silicon Alley Insider, they have heard from mobile industry insiders that AOL is not renewing deals with publishers. AOL is losing customers and is focusing more on internal properties. Many Third Screen Media employees have also supposedly been applying to other jobs.
Before being acquired by AOL, Third Screen Media raised $8 million from TD Capital Ventures and Blue Chip Venture Company. During the time of the acquisition, Microsoft was rumored to be involved with bidding for Third Media also.
OurStage is a music discovery website that plugs itself as an “online American Idol.” The company has raised about $3 million out of a planned $6 million round of funding. Thus far the company raised $20 million total.
OurStage CEO Ben Campbell said that the company should be profitable by 2010. And former Sony Music CEO and Chairman Don Ienner recently joined the OurStage Board of Directors.
OurStage allows indie artists to upload music in order to build fans, similar to MySpace. OurStage users can also set up clubs and venue information. Fans can also rate the music uploaded by artists.
OurStage shares revenue from the tracks with the artists. Another revenue stream OurStage has going is display advertisements. AOL’s Platform-A division is responsible for OurStage’s display advertising. AOL Music also has a deal in place with OurStage.
Earlier this week, AOL decided to fire at least 30-50 people from their sales and marketing division. Many of those that were affected belonged to the Platform-A subsidiary. The firings are based on past sales performance according to a BusinessInsider.com source. The sales representatives had experience that ranged anywhere from 2 to 10 years.
“From what I’m hearing the state over there is panic shock and chaos. It was a bloodbath,” stated a source. Laid off representatives from the company will most likely be replaced by Google representatives. Poaching from Google started to pick up after former Google executive Tim Armstrong became chairman and CEO of AOL in March. Former Google exec Jeff Levick replaced Greg Coleman, who was at AOL for less than three months.
Google may want to consider stepping up some incentives for their salespeople to prevent Armstrong from strong-arming them to AOL. If anyone has any further information about this lay-off, please leave it in the comments.
As of 2006 about 44.3 million Hispanics live in the U.S. That is about 15% of the total population. Bebo wants to capitalize on that by launching a Bebo portal for Latinos living in the U.S. Media partners involved in this project include Hearst and AOL Latino. The Bebo U.S. Latino website will have the latest in music, entertainment, videos, photos, polls, quizzes, surveys, and other content that is syndicated from MisQuinceMag.com.
“Expanding into new markets is a key pillar of our growth strategy, and we see huge potential for the growing Latino audience in the U.S. Our platform allows users to connect with other users, entertainment and brands, both globally and locally. The richness of our experience lies in the user’s ability to express him or herself – as evidenced in our new Lifestory feature – and in the ability to connect to people, media and brands through the Lifestream and our Open Media Platform,” stated Nicole Vanderbilt, VP of the International division at Bebo.
The launch of this new protal was made in conjunction with AOL’s new Spanish language resource guide TecnoPadres.com. Advertising for the new portal will be provided by AOL’s Platform A division. The full press release is available after the jump.
