• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, April 11, 2005

America Online will replace an in-house ad management platform with DoubleClick's DART for Publishers, under an agreement announced by the companies last week. AOL, which started using DoubleClick's ad management platform on a trial basis on MapQuest on March 1, hopes to roll out DoubleClick throughout the entire service--including Moviefone, AOL.com, AOL Instant Messenger, and various other divisions--by September, said David Lebow, executive vice president, AOL media networks. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Lebow said AOL anticipates that DoubleClick's platform will allow AOL to offer marketers better reporting about their ad campaigns, and the opportunity to target ads more efficiently. "If we know where to run certain advertisements to reach certain prospects, then we need to run less advertisements to achieve the same result for advertisers," Lebow said.

DoubleClick's Web site touts the company's ability to engage in "psychographic" targeting, which it describes with the statement: "bias your ads towards users who are most likely to respond." In general, behavioral targeting involves categorizing consumers based on their Web surfing behavior.

Lebow said that AOL would likely use DoubleClick's capabilities of targeting based on geographic or demographic profiles. He added that AOL would only use targeting capabilities in a manner consistent with its privacy policy.

Despite the AOL deal, DoubleClick's future remains unclear. Last fall, DoubleClick announced it had hired investment firm Lazard Freres & Co. to "explore strategic options," including a possible sale or merger. But DoubleClick's stock reports in recent months have been increasingly upbeat, leading some to question whether the company remains for sale.

For now, David Rosenblatt, DoubleClick's president, said that the company is "aggressively increasing headcount and investment in its ad management business," adding that the hiring spree is the largest the division has seen in five years. He said that new hires will handle AOL duties, but declined to provide specific numbers.