• February 27, 2008

AOL will begin serving its own text ads across some of the most popular sites in its network, including AOL News, Money & Finance, Sports, Entertainment and Mail, via Quigo, the PPC engine it bought for $340 million last November.

With Quigo's AdSonar-powered ad platform, advertisers can target consumers by specific page, category, keyword or an entire section within AOL's network--a move to offer the transparency and control that is often absent from blind, run-of-network buys.

The Web giant will continue to serve Google text ads across its network, as AOL inked a long-standing deal with the search giant in 2002 (and re-signed the deal in late 2005).

According to a company spokesperson's statement, AOL wants to leverage its own "internal capabilities" wherever possible--but not at the expense of relevance or user experience. "In some cases we may use both Quigo's contextual advertising and [Google, etc.] sponsored links," the spokesperson said. "You may find multiple types of ad units on a page so that we can get the most relevant and most effective media in front of consumers."

Quigo is part of AOL's Platform-A integrated advertising division, which includes the Advertising.com display network, behavioral targeting firm Tacoda and the ADTECH global ad-serving platform, among other units.

--Tameka Kee