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AOL Shoves Away Buy.at

Written on

Mar 1, 2010 

Author

Gavin Dunaway  |

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AOL Shoves Away Buy.at

ADOTAS – Aol’s been going through a lot of changes lately after splitting with sugar daddy Time Warner. As it’s refocusing as a content-based network, Aol’s decided it just doesn’t have enough time or energy for affiliate marketing, so it has sold Buy.at to London-based Digital Window.

Aol hopes Buy.at’s 70 employees like their new home, with a big field to run around in and plenty of birds to chase…. Maybe Digital Window could send some pictures back to Aol… No, that would just make things harder.

The rumored price tag is $150 million, which would be $25 million more than what Aol paid for Buy.at back in 2008. According to Aol, Buy.at has been highly successful in the marketing services arena — Reuters has the company’s annual sales at 40 million euros — and would be better off [sniff] being owned by a group in that space.

According to a release, Digital Window — the majority of which is owned by German media group Axel Springer and Swiss communications group Publigroupe — and Buy.At will form the UK’s largest performance marketing group.

Since being acquired in February 2008, Buy.at operated as a wholly-owned business unit of Advertising.com. At the time of the merger then-Chairman and CEO Randy Falco said the acquisition would enhance Aol’s Platform-A offerings, which had been built up during an advertising shopping spree that included Tacoda, Quigo, Advertising.com, adTech and Third Screen Media.

But Platform-A is no more, rebranded as Aol Advertising. CEO Tim Armstrong said the company is developing a new ad platform, with premium being the aim. Back in December, JP Morgan analyst Imrahn Kahn left a meeting with Armstrong convinced that Aol would knock Advertising.com off its inventory teat and only sell the top-notch slots.

In an email statement, Aol said it’s reviewing its assets in regards to how they relate to the company’s new core strategy. Does that mean we’ll see a full-on garage sale soon?

Tags: affiliate-marketing, AOL, buy.at, digital window and performance-marketing

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