New York — It appears that AOL is becoming serious about mobile advertising by sharpening its ad-positioning tools for the iPhone in a nod to the popularity of the Apple smartphones.
The Internet media company on Wednesday announced that it has updated its advertising system, known as Platform-A, the mobile industry’s most strong and comprehensive solution for targeting advertising to iPhone users, so that advertisers can send promotions to people while they are surfing the Web on the iPhone.
The move symbolizes the latest initiative by AOL to expand its mobile ad offerings. Last year Time Warner’s Internet business moved its headquarters to New York to be closer to Madison Avenue, and Platform-A, the division formed in June to bring together AOL’s various advertising businesses under one roof, whose subsidiaries include Baltimore’s Advertising.com, is launching new technology that allows advertisers to specifically target Apple iPhone users worldwide.
The ad technology will be offered through the brand Third Screen Media, a sister company to Advertising.com that AOL acquired last year. Since August, AOL also started allowing publishers to offer products throughout its multiple mobile ad networks via Third Screen through “partitioning” technology.
The iPhone-tailored ads will be delivered when an iPhone user browses any of AOL’s sites or those of its partners, for example, is using technology that detects when a user is viewing an ad on the iPhone Web browser and then delivers banner ads designed specifically optimized for viewing on an iPhone.
Platform-A is among several companies and marketers looking to capitalize on the growing corps of iPhone users by creating online content that is specially designed to be viewed on an iPhone. The iPhone ads will also link users directly to the iPhone-tailored versions of advertisers’ Web sites.
Although Third Screen Media centers on cell phone mobile Web sites and Advertising.com handles traditional Web sites, both have a common business model where they pool together the ad space on a network of Web sites and then sell it in chunks to advertisers who are trying to reach certain demographics. Web site publishers join the network as a way to make money off of their sites.
Being a division of Platform-A, Third Screen Media is an exclusive mobile network having access to a Web display network reaching 90% of the Internet audience, setting it to be the only organization that can offer such a complete solution. And by combining the reach of the Third Screen Media mobile network with its industry-leading Web network, Platform-A officials expect to deliver 75 million ads to the popular Apple devices each month.
“Today’s launch is a perfect example of how Platform-A’s unmatched reach, solutions and technologies can benefit advertisers trying to reach consumers in the most compelling way,” said Lynda Clarizio, President of Platform-A.
According to Clarizio: “We can not only help advertisers effectively reach iPhone users on WAP pages and Web pages, but we can also deliver banners optimized for display on the iPhone.”
“The concept is that advertisers can approach Platform-A and say ‘I want to reach iPhone users,’” said Kent Johnson, director of business operations for Third Screen Media. “We are guiding users to the right experience for them, based on how they access the Web and what campaign they are being hit with.”
Apple sold around six million of the first version of the iPhone, which it launched in 2007. Ever since launching a faster version in July, the company is now producing as many as 800,000 phones a week, according to reports.
Johnson said AOL was not ready to name any advertisers customizing ads for the iPhone under the new program. But he hoped the iPhone-specific ads would help “tear down the walls” between desktop Internet and mobile advertising. “We are trying to make it as easy and seamless for our ad partners as possible,” Johnson said.