Time Warner’s AOL will be selling ads next to search results starting this Monday. The ads will be powered by Google’s AdWords advertising platform. And the new service will be called AOL Search Marketplace. Google acquired 5% of AOL after a $1 billion investment in December 2005.
Mike J. Kelly, President of AOL Media Networks believes that this new service will allow clients to target users of AOL Search. “We have found that there is a significant impact when search and display campaigns are coordinated. The addition of the AOL Search Marketplace enables us to offer advertisers end-to-end solutions, everything from AOL to our industry-leading third-party display network to video advertising and performance ads. This will let marketers better coordinate their advertising, and build greater efficiencies into their campaigns, with AOL,” stated Kelly.
The development of AOL Search Marketplace complements a deal that was completed at the end of last month. AOL’s subsidiary, Advertising.com announced that they would be the advertising management services partner for News Corporation and NBC Universal.
According to a December 2006 Nielsen//NetRatings chart, AOL has the fourth largest market share in Internet search behind Google, Yahoo!, and MSN/Windows Live Search
[source: ZDNet].
