AOL has TV envy, will launch advertising by viewing times
With the introduction of AOL 8.0 next week which will include several programming initiatives, AOL Time Warner will emulate a strategy that is more like the television industry -- selling advertisers access to audiences based on peak viewing times called "dayparts" according to this News.com story. This is an important part of AOL's effort to attract more advertising in the face of the economic slowdown and slowing new customer signups (just 492,000 in the 2nd quarter compared with the 1.3 million during the same period in 2001):
Web publishers including The New York Times, USAToday.com and Yahoo are already selling advertisements by time of day; and some have even started tailoring content as well.
This summer, five major Web publishers, including CBS MarketWatch, Weather.com and CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, aligned to sell ads that span all of their sites, helping advertisers target at-work audiences. AT&T's mLife campaign was the first to sign on, with the aim of reaching business executives during the workday.
..."It's catching fire," said Michael Zimbalist, president of the industry group Online Publishers Association. "The Internet has evolved from a print model, with units on pages, to more of a broadcast TV model, where the time of day dictates the type of advertising to be displayed rather than the physical location on a page."
..."If you have a defined audience at a defined period of time, you're (able to) say to advertisers that for 15 minutes you're going to reach this many people and this kind of demographic," said Barrett. "This is what advertisers have been asking for." He added that this sales strategy should not undermine the unique interactivity of the Internet, but that it takes the best of the Web and "overlays it with what folks are comfortable buying."