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AOL Recreating Brand By Creating Content

Michael S. Rosenwald takes a look at the AOL brand 25 years after its birth, peering ahead more than backwards. Observers wonder, he writes, whether the service associated with the screeching sound of dial-up Internet connections can carve a niche creating targeted content in a broadband world dominated by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo.

According to Nielsen, AOL currently attracts the seventh-largest audience of any Web brand. It has achieved that status mostly by creating or buying some of the most popular sites on the Web including Engadget.com, PoliticsDaily.com, FanHouse.com, DailyFinance.com and even MMAFighting.com -- an approach similar to Disney's unbranded ownership of ABC, ESPN and Miramax. "Believe it or not, content really is a toddler on the Internet right now," says CEO Tim Armstrong says.

Advertisers are taking AOL seriously again, Rosenwald writes, but it has a lot of catching up to do. Last quarter, its sites garnered 2.9% of the display ad market, according to comScore. But "the world demands high levels of content curating, and AOL has the ability to do that," says Bant Breen, president of ad firm Initiative Worldwide.

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