Simplifies the complex digital ecosystem and provides holistic, tailored solutions for publishers
AOL unveils ONE by AOL: Publishers, offering AOL’s advanced content and distribution capabilities to Australian publishers.
Over the past six years, AOL has invested more than $1 billion in publisher-first technologies, and has developed and expanded those solutions globally. By bringing the businesses and platforms together with ONE by AOL: Publishers, AOL is helping publishers with audience engagement and analytics, content distribution and revenue management.
“This builds on the strong offering we already had for publishers locally,” says Mitch Waters, AOL’s Australian Managing Director. “AOL is a publisher itself. When we look to build or acquire specific technologies we do so with a view of how it will solve our own publishing challenges. This gives us a deep understanding of what publishers need and how they can maximize the value of their content. ONE by AOL: Publishers pulls together the latest technology to achieve this, and will help publishers capitalise on the consumer shift to mobile and video.”
The new product suite incorporates capabilities from the recently acquired French start-up AlephD, which helps publishers automatically identify the best price for each ad impression. It’s the latest in a string of acquisitions as AOL sought to build the most comprehensive, integrated solution for the digital ad sector.
The launch of ONE by AOL: Publishers has been welcomed by the Australian industry. Mark Frain, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Multi Channel Networks (MCN) says, “MCN is already leveraging multiple AOL publisher technologies so we’re excited to see the additional benefits the unified platform will bring. It’s an exciting step, enabling the aggregation of more mediums for the same audience, bringing greater efficiencies and better outcomes for clients”.
ONE by AOL: Publishers provides publishers with the ability to sell audiences across all of their properties, including linear TV, connected TV, online video, display and mobile. The addition of AlephD means publishers will have the analytics on hand to make real-time decisions and achieve the best yield for every impression they sell.
Mitch Waters believes that in Australia, with the addition of ONE by AOL: Publishers programmatic opportunities (especially video) may yield more revenue for the publisher than directly sold inventory.
Guy Burbridge, Commercial Director at Inception Digital says, “Already AOL’s tech stack gives us access to a unique suite of tools. This is another step in the journey, enabling our publishers to deliver best in class content to their audiences and further monetize our video capacity both home and abroad”.
One by AOL: Publishers continues AOL’s commitment to providing an open platform, so customers can integrate with their other key systems and use their own and third party data to achieve a holistic view of campaigns and their performance.
AOL’s commitment to the publisher community is a stark contrast in an industry that has largely built advertiser-first tools. ONE by AOL: Publishers delivers a number of differentiated benefits, including:
● Unique Demand: It is tightly connected with the ONE by AOL buying platform, making the process of selling advertising seamless for publishers. This helps publishers maintain closer, more valuable relationships with their ad buyers, including brands, agencies, and trading desks, as well as integrated third-party demand sources.
● Tackling the Tech Tax: It simplifies the number of platforms and partners needed to harness every type of advertising relationship and satisfy every ad buyer requirement, while eliminating much of the painful tech tax that publishers face with cobbled together solutions.
● Data, Analysis & Optimization: Publishers can harness AOL’s robust tools to bolster understanding of both their own assets and the behavior of their buyers. The offering analyzes patterns in pricing, audience, and inventory, enabling publishers to build more valuable segments of audiences and inventory packages.
● Mobile-First: AOL simplifies the challenges associated with monetizing mobile, including within apps where it’s incredibly time-intensive and requires numerous resources to execute. The offering provides a single solution across not only all formats and devices, but all ad buying partners, with a flexible SDK that accesses one of the industry’s largest mobile portfolios.
● Activate and Expand Video Opportunities: AOL gives publishers the power to scale their most valuable inventory, video, by creating new opportunities through distribution and player technologies.
Whilst publishers will see more synergies and economic efficiencies by using more components, ONE by AOL: Publishers is a suite of modular products that customers can buy separately or in various combinations.