Ask & AOL

New York -- As it sets itself up to disunite from Time Warner, AOL today said that it has assigned Publciis Groupe's “Leo Burnett” to help the company communicate its upcoming reinvention to people around the world. The company moved quickly, giving five large and small agencies two weeks to prepare a presentation, AOL COO Kim Partoll told the trade mag.

Earlier this year, Time Warner Inc. announced that its Board of Directors had permitted its management to move ahead with plans for the complete legal and structural separation of AOL from Time Warner. Following the proposed transaction, AOL would be an independent, publicly traded company.

Leo Burnett will offer strategic brand communications consulting services to AOL as the brand sets up to ameliorate its purpose and personality. Burnett bested undisclosed agencies in what AOL described as “a closed request for proposal process.”

New York -- AOL today announced that it has appointed former Time Warner Cable Inc. executive Arthur Minson as its chief financial officer as the Internet company prepares to separate from Time Warner Inc. and tries to fix its struggling business.

AOL said new CFO Arthur Minson, who was earlier deputy CFO at Time Warner Cable, helped manage that division's separation from Time Warner this year, New York- based AOL said today in a statement. Prior to that he had been an AOL executive handling corporate finance. Minson, 38, begins at AOL on Sept. 8, replacing Nisha Kumar, who left in the first half.

AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong said in an interview that while Minson's spinoff experience with the cable unit was important it was not the main reason for the appointment.

New York -- AOL is out in a legal scuffle with its moniker. This week, the company has filed a lawsuit against “Advertise.com”, for trademark infringement and employing unfair competition practices, with the Internet giant claiming that the name and the design are quite similar to its own Advertising.com and Ad.com, all the while offering very similar services.

In the official complaint filed this week in federal district court in Virginia, AOL argued that the “Plaintiffs and their predecessors have continuously used and extensively promoted the ADVERTISING.COM and AD.COM names and marks in connection with the provision of a variety of services.”

AOL argues that Advertise.com's name deceives customers into thinking that the company is affiliated with the AOL brands Advertising.com and Ad.com.

New York -- AOL is moving intensely into the fast-growing world of mixed martial arts, buying MMAFighting.com, an eight-year-old independent enthusiast Web site devoted to the sport of mixed martial arts, its third acquisition in a month to lure online advertisers.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but AOL executives said the new site MMAFighting.com, which was launched in 2001, will cover all the stories and multimedia from the already extensive Mixed Martial Arts now on AOL's sports site, FanHouse, within the next few months, New York-based AOL said in a statement today.

And after a planned relaunch of MMAFighting.com later this year, both properties' staffs and resources will become the home for the current MMA FanHouse, AOL's flagship sports destination. The newly unified destination will provide MMA fans with in-depth information on the sport, which to-date has been unavailable in the mainstream sports media.

London -- In a move to make the new-look of AOL more appealing, the web-services company has named Bebo's European VP and MD "Kate Burns" to the newly created post as head of its European Advertising Sales operations, just before new AOL CEO Tim Armstrong completes his 100-day company review.

According to AllThingsD, which in May reported that Bebo would be transformed in to a new "AOL Ventures" unit, after president Joanna Shields quit. Burns had been the de facto Bebo boss in Shields' absence, and Bebo does not yet have a replacement lined up.

Burns would be responsible for expanding ad sales on AOL's owned and operated properties in Europe, improving its Advertising.com third-party network, and delivering unmatched consumer insights.

San Francisco -- AOL's Truveo, which boasts itself as the second largest video search engine both in the US and worldwide, is releasing a global revamp tonight across 17 of its country-specific sites, including in the U.S, where it is aiming for a less-cluttered, almost Google-like home page. The company says the update makes it easier than ever to find video on the web.

Looking to seize the video search market share from Google Video, Blinkx, and Microsoft Corp.'s new Bing site, AOL said the revamped Truveo indexes more than 350 million online videos. It also signed an agreement with a top U.S. Spanish-language broadcaster Univision to add Truveo's video search capabilities to Univision.com.

San Francisco -- Breaking a barrier from being a traditional search engine to reflect it brand name: “Ask” following the very recent trend, that is finding answers to your questions or problems. Well, according to Ask.com, they have the answer. At one of the search industry's leading annual conferences, SemTech 2009, in San Jose, California, Ask.com took the wraps off its proprietary database of 300 million Q&A pairs for consumers in the United States and United Kingdom.

We know today for awhile that Answers sites are growing rapidly. For instance Bing, Hunch, and Wolfram Alpha to name a few are all striving to achieve the same goal of providing answers quickly to searchers.

San Francisco -- Struggling to ramp up its revenue and seize its share of local advertising, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit on Thursday went on a shopping spree under the aegis of new CEO Tim Armstrong, and surprisingly enough the company has acquired two local online media companies Patch Media Corp and hipster-oriented events listing site Going.com, as part of a broader strategy to build the company's position in the relatively fast-growing local online advertising market.

AOL, in a statement, confirmed the acquisition of New York-based Patch Media Corp., a provider of local news and information platform for local towns and communities, and Boston-based Going Inc., a platform for users to share information about events in major cities.

London -- Former Bebo architect Joanna Shields, the high-profile new media topper who promoted the success of teen-friendly social networking site, Bebo, has decided to part ways as prexy of AOL's People Networks division, making a U-turn from New York to London to settle with her family and pursue entrepreneurial interests.

According to an internal memo to staff, AOL's new global chief executive Tim Armstrong and picked up by Kara Swisher, wrote: “Joanna Shields has decided to exit from her role as president of People Networks/EVP of AOL and return to London to spend more time with her family and allowing Shields to follow her specialist startup executive skills -- perhaps hinting that her days at AOL were always bound to be limited.”

London -- Seeking to reclaim its laurels, AOL UK today has launched a beta version of its new homepage that include access to third-party multiple email accounts and social networking services from a single online destination.

The beta site launched effective today (12 May), allows AOL users for the first time, to access multiple email accounts, including AOL Mail and rivals Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Google Mail including access to social networks interface such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace along with AOL-owned Bebo and AIM.

The UK launch of new homepage model follows the US, which was relaunched in September and is growing at 7% in page views and 26% increase in total minutes spent on the page year on year, according to comScore figures.