February 7, 2011
Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington hosted a conference call with analysts this morning to discuss AOL’s announced $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post. The Huffington Post is expected to contribute $50 million in revenues this year, and quickly ramp up to a $100 million revenue run-rate. That still represents a tiny portion of AOL’s $2.4 billion in revenue, but it is Armstrong’s largest acquisition to date, and his team believes it will help put AOL over the top in terms of putting the company on a growth track again by 2013 in terms of adjusted EBITDA.
It is clear that the deal is as much about buying into the new publishing model that the Huffington Post represents (which is in keeping with AOL’s acquisition of TechCrunch and emphasis on blogs like Engadget on the tech side). And it is about buying talent, both at the top and throughout Huffington Post on the editorial and sales side. Asked how long she plans to stay, Huffington says, “I told Tim I wantto...
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February 2, 2011
Two years into his tenure as AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong is stepping on the gas.
By April, he wants AOL editorial to increase its stories per month from 33,000 to 55,000.
He wants pageviews per story to jump from 1,500 to 7,000.
He wants video stories to go from being 4% of all stories produced to 70%.
He wants the percentage of stories optimized for search engines to reach 95%.
We know all this, because right now, Armstrong's lieutenants are making their way through the company's many editorial divisions, training them on "The AOL Way."
Some of AOL's journalists, editors, content creators aren't all happy with the training.
"AOL is the most f-----up, bull---t company on earth," says one, who joined AOL in what he calls, "the...
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December 20, 2010
As we close out 2010, AOL has been busier than Congress this month with a flurry of new deals for us to chew on before New Year’s. The latest is a key talent hire in bringing on Amber J. Lawson as the company’s new Head of Video Programming. Lawson will oversee AOL Studios, AOL Video hub, AOL.com and deals with 3rd party production companies making original content for the network. More specifically, she’ll now have about 566 million video streams a month to look after.
The hire takes Lawson from her post at online network Babelgum where she was the Comedy Publisher, growing the site’s comedy channel into a respected curation of comedic shorts and series. Notable pickups include Streamy Award-winner Kevin Pollak’s Vamped Out and the popular Kids Reenact series from Landline TV.
Much of AOL’s new focus on original web video can be tracked to David Eun, the new president of AOL’s media and studios division, who came on board after leading global content partnerships...
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