Big wins… (on my way to Austin for 10 hours)
On my way to Austin to present to one of the major PC makers in the world (you can take a guess who, I’m sure Jeff could guess).
One of the pleasantly unexpected WINs we’re having with AOL is in the advertising space. Our blogs are *just* starting to be included in pitches done by AOL’s sales team, and our inventory is about to be plugged into the massive DoubleClick structure AOL has built. What does that mean? Well, it means that when someone buys 100M impressions on AOL Autos we might be able to include 4M autoblog impressions in the deal.
However, something much, much deeper is at work than simply tagging along. What we’re really doing is providing the entire spectrum of an audience to our advertisers.
For example, Autoblog is read largely by a core group of early adopters and influencers. You know these folks, they’re the ones that tell you what model car you should consider, what features you should get, and can even tell you about recalls (my NYC friends will have a hard time understanding this, so just substitute cell phone for the car metaphor). No one can deliver that audience like we can with Engadget, Autoblog, etc.
Add to that AOL’s massive reach with the early and late majority and we can sell someone the complete adoption cycle.
Sales, when you get past the startup level (where I’ve spent much of my life), is about efficiency. Google AdWords is hyper efficient, as is the sales department at CondeNast–which can cut you whatever niche you’re in the mood for that day. AOL’s got that same wicked efficiency and it’s amazing to get sucked into it.
