• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 8, 2015

Will Millennial Media provide the spark that AOL needs to ignite its mobile ad business? The company now has 238 million reasons to hope so.

Unfortunately for AOL, some top analysts are throwing shade at the deal, and its implications for the company that Tim Armstrong saved.

The problem is that Millennial Media captures a minuscule 0.3% of domestic mobile ad revenue -- or just over $100 million -- according to new figures from eMarketer. By contrast, Google controls 32.9% of the U.S.' mobile ad pie -- or about $10 billion -- while Facebook now accounts for a 19.4% share, or nearly $5.9 billion.

The Millennial deal, therefore, doesn’t come close to giving AOL the necessary firepower to compete against Google and Facebook, says eMarketer analyst Cathy Boyle. "To be a serious player in the mobile display ad market, media companies need to offer advertisers scale, robust audience targeting and sophisticated measurement tools," Boyle explains in a new report.

In AOL’s defense, Boyle believes the acquisition will expand the breadth and depth of the in-app display ad inventory AOL can offer advertisers, which will help those advertisers achieve greater scale.

In addition, AOL will gain the mobile user profile data that Millennial Media has been amassing for years, which will help improve its ability to find and target specific audiences on mobile devices.