AOL's Platform-A subsidiary is now bringing affiliate marketing to widget ads. If that sounds like a lot of media speak, that's because it is.
To power widget ads, AOL acquired start-up Goowy in February, and it has already worked the acquisition into Platform-A. As part of Tuesday's announcement, Goowy's technology has been officially incorporated into Buy.at, an affiliate network that AOL also acquired earlier this year.
"Once a publisher places a widget on their Web site, consumers can grab it and distribute the widget to other locations on the Web, including social-network pages, desktops, and blogs," a release from AOL explained. "The publisher earns revenue for each sale driven by the widget, even if it's several download generations away from the publisher's site."
AOL has made many significant advertising announcements in recent months as part of its refocus on online media, but it's still having a rough time as a subsidiary of Time Warner.
While AOL's ad revenues were up 2 percent in the second quarter of 2008, it wasn't enough to make up for losses at its once-powerful access service--which Time Warner plans to spin off.
AOL announced on Monday that it has purchased Goowy Media, a company that has created technology for widget creation and analytics reporting. AOL has been partnering with Goowy since early in 2007; financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
To consumers, Goowy is best-known as the parent company of Yourminis, a widget creation and discovery engine.
But the Time Warner unit's aim with Goowy is more likely on the advertising front. AOL recently relocated its headquarters from Virginia to New York to bolster its Madison Avenue street cred; the former online-service powerhouse has been attempting to reshape itself as a digital-media company with profits stemming primarily from advertising, not subscription revenues.
AOL stated in a press release on Monday that Goowy's technology will be used in part for widget-based advertising, providing both more interactive content and detailed statistics on where and how the widgets are being used.
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