Dive Brief:
- A+E struck a deal with AOL for use of its programmatic platform for a private marketplace as well as including an upfront ad commitment by A+E across AOL properties.
- A+E will use AOL’s programmatic platform, ONE by AOL, for display and video ads on its digital properties, and Gravity, AOL’s content recommendation engine for personalized content and ads on History.com.
- For now the deal doesn’t include a TV element.
Dive Insight:
“With consumers driving media transformation today, it’s become that much more important for publishers to deploy technology and data in new ways to offer unique, personalized experiences to their audiences,” AOL President Bob Lord said in a statement. “A+E Networks has been a first-mover in that regard, and we look forward to working with them to deliver increased revenue opportunities through automation.”
Describing elements of the deal, Tim Mahlman, president of AOL Publisher Platforms, told Adweek, "They're licensing our technology to create a private marketplace which allows them to actually use our technology and create their own exchange marketplace by inviting their own partners into their own closed ecosystem."
The massive deal includes video, display and personalization elements, and A+E is expected to leverage AOL's premium content brands – Huffington Post, Xbox and TechCrunch, among others – to push awareness and use their first-party data for improved targeting.
Mahlman went on to say that typically AOL would have made six separate pitches to A+E to get a deal with the scope of this agreement. He said, "It kind of validates a lot of what we as a company have been investing in and betting on and the future of how advertises and publishers would want to embrace this type of solution."
