• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 10, 2008

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said Wednesday the company is working hard on a possible deal involving AOL and aims to resolve talks on the Web portal's fate "fairly soon."

During a keynote address at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York, Bewkes emphasized the relative overall stability of Time Warner's film, TV and magazine businesses while acknowledging weakness in display advertising on AOL and in print ad sales.

With the full spinoff of its cable unit on track to close by early next year, he also said that Time Warner would return to its roots as a "branded content company."

How--or whether--AOL fits into the company's plans is still unclear. Negotiations over an outright sale of AOL, or a smaller-scale deal involving the portal, have been ongoing for months variously with Yahoo, Microsoft and Google.

Bewkes said that discussions continue with those counterparts as Time Warner attempts to figure out the best course for increasing shareholder value. It could mean holding onto AOL, spinning it off or "having certain pieces of it go into combination with one of the other three companies," said Bewkes in a question-and-answer session. "You have some very big elephants walking around in the forest on this."

The Time Warner chief reiterated the company's disappointment with AOL's ad revenue dropping 6% in the third quarter compared to a year ago, even as traffic increased 7% and page views by 50%. The audience gains follow the rollout of some 30 new or revamped sites on AOL in the last two years in an effort to pump up ad sales.

Conspicuously absent from Bewkes' remarks was any mention of Bebo, the social network acquired by Time Warner in March for $850 million and relaunched Wednesday with a range of new features. In addition to being more closely tied to AOL, Bebo now also allows users to access e-mail and feeds from other services such as Yahoo, Google and Twitter.

Although it is the No. 3 social media property, Bebo trails well behind MySpace and Facebook in traffic. It had 5.9 million unique U.S. visitors as of October, according to comScore, compared to 76.3 million for MySpace and 46 million for Facebook.

Analysts have questioned whether Time Warner overpaid for Bebo, while Bewkes and Time Warner CFO John Martin have admitted that the acquisition was a riskier deal than the company would normally pursue.

Social networking sites remain unproven as advertising vehicles despite rapid growth. Market research firm eMarketer cast further doubt on the category Wednesday when it lowered its estimate for advertising on social networks this year from $1.4 billion to $1.2 billion, and in 2009, from $1.8 billion to $1.3 billion.

MySpace and Facebook together are expected to account for nearly 70% of the projected $1.2 billion in 2008. While all types of online advertising will decline in the next two years, eMarketer said experimental formats, including ads on social networks, will be hit especially hard.

For his part, Bewkes also sounded a cautious note on any further acquisitions by Time Warner, digital or otherwise. "The history of our company, and especially those in the media sector, would make you concerned about the dangers of acquisitions if not done carefully," he said.