Dive Brief:
- Now that the deal transferring Microsoft’s display ad business to AOL is going into effect, AOL investing in training the some 600 of these employees in all its ad tech including programmatic.
- The agreement transfers Microsoft’s display ad business to AOL for 10 years as well as 1,200 employees.
- AOL has been busy refreshing its ad business; the media giant also recently rolled out new interactive features for video ads and launched an in-house custom content division.
Dive Insight:
At the end of June, Microsoft and AOL signed an agreement transferring Microsoft’s display ad business and 1,200 employees to AOL. The deal also called for AOL to drop its search relationship with Google in favor of Microsoft’s Bing. With the ad deal in place, AOL now has plans to train some of these one-time Microsoft employees in its entire ad tech stack, including programmatic, with which those employees are likely unfamiliar.
The deal formally kicks in January 2016 and allows AOL to serve ads on its own sites, as well as Microsoft’s sites, including the Xbox gaming console, making the media giant's ad packages more attractive to potential advertisers.
Getting the former Microsoft up to speed with programmatic is important for AOL because the platform accounts for 45% of AOL’s global brand advertising, and is rapidly growing with a 80% year over year increase in Q2 revenue.