• by Masha Geller , December 3, 2002

Everyone is talking about it, so I suppose I’m expected to. Here goes.

If nothing else, you’ve got to take your hat off to AOL – haggard as it is – for being able to pull off a whole day when no one talked about anything other than the company’s proposed plan of action. Who cares about Avenue A buying i-Frontier to form a truly impressive digital agency poised to really move online advertising forward? Forget about eMarketer predicting a recovery for the online ad world in 2003. What was that about radio ad revenues skyrocketing last month?

All that and more fell by the wayside yesterday, as the struggling behemoth announced it would pay more attention to “communications, community and commerce.”

Don’t get me wrong. I think the plan to use exclusive content from other AOL Time Warner divisions on AOL is a fabulous one because I’m a firm believer in “Content is King.” It’s also a much better opportunity for different company divisions to work together, unlike the promise of cross media ad deals that hyped the original mega-merger.

For that very reason, I think that making AOL the hub of “content that can’t be found anywhere else,” as AOL chief Jon Miller puts it, is exactly what the company’s goal should be.

At the same time I wonder if AOL can really pull it off. The company said yesterday that many of the lucrative long-term ad contracts it signed during the dot-com good years are soon expiring and the company is expecting a 40-50% drop in advertising and commerce revenues in 2003 as a result.

True, they’re hoping that ''solid growth'' in worldwide subscription revenues will offset those declines resulting in flat growth for the "transitional year," but investors – and many media experts - are skeptical. What does AOL plan to do about broadband access, which it now offers at a higher price than almost everyone else? Will consumers really pay up to $15 a month for other premium services? And, more philosophically, is AOL Time Warner content truly all that irreplaceable from the consumer point of view?

My jury is out, and will stay out until the end of 2003 or until at least some of the above questions are answered.

There! I talked about it.