Additionally, according to Nielsen Online, AOL users spent more than three hours and forty-five minutes on its sites or applications in February, which is the most of any online company.

AOL.com grew 5 percent in pageviews, 6 percent in unique visitors and 32 percent in total minutes year over year, partly due to it opening up to third-party content, including email and social networks in the fall of 2008.

Bill Wilson

In January, AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow that centralizes the company’s publishing efforts, with the goal of expanding its global reach.

AOL News also had a record month, reaching its largest audience ever with over 30.7 million unique visitors as well as a 48 percent increase in pageviews, 19 percent increase in total minutes and 18 percent increase in unique visitors.

"MediaGlow continues to grow audience reach and engagement by leaning into the fragmentation of the Web and creating valuable brands that attract new and larger audiences across numerous valuable demographics," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

"This helps our advertising partners reach a highly engaged and receptive audience across a wide range of brand offerings."
 

AOL says its redesigned homepage grew 5 percent in page views, 12 percent in unique visitors, a record 33 percent in total minutes and 6 percent in total visits year-over-year.

Bill Wilson

The jump in growth could be due to AOL’s efforts to become more open. It recently began allowing users to access email accounts from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. It also allowed users to access social networking sites from its homepage including Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

In January AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow, which aims to, centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and expand its global reach. Under the MediaGlow umbrella AOL has plans to launch 30-targeted sites this year.

At the beginning of 2009 MediaGlow launched its first targeted site, FanHouse that replaced AOL Sports. Other vertical sites are slated to be rolled out with an emphasis on specialized sports fans, including one focused on Mixed Martial Arts.

"MediaGlow has started 2009 by reaching its largest audience to date and building core brands that are at scale."

"By leaning into the fragmentation of the Web, we are creating valuable brands that are driving engagement and attracting a larger audience," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

AOL says its redesigned homepage grew 5 percent in page views, 12 percent in unique visitors, a record 33 percent in total minutes and 6 percent in total visits year-over-year.

Bill Wilson

The jump in growth could be due to AOL’s efforts to become more open. It recently began allowing users to access email accounts from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. It also allowed users to access social networking sites from its homepage including Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

In January AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow, which aims to, centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and expand its global reach. Under the MediaGlow umbrella AOL has plans to launch 30-targeted sites this year.

At the beginning of 2009 MediaGlow launched its first targeted site, FanHouse that replaced AOL Sports. Other vertical sites are slated to be rolled out with an emphasis on specialized sports fans, including one focused on Mixed Martial Arts.

"MediaGlow has started 2009 by reaching its largest audience to date and building core brands that are at scale."

"By leaning into the fragmentation of the Web, we are creating valuable brands that are driving engagement and attracting a larger audience," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

AOL says its redesigned homepage grew 5 percent in page views, 12 percent in unique visitors, a record 33 percent in total minutes and 6 percent in total visits year-over-year.

Bill Wilson

The jump in growth could be due to AOL’s efforts to become more open. It recently began allowing users to access email accounts from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. It also allowed users to access social networking sites from its homepage including Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

In January AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow, which aims to, centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and expand its global reach. Under the MediaGlow umbrella AOL has plans to launch 30-targeted sites this year.

At the beginning of 2009 MediaGlow launched its first targeted site, FanHouse that replaced AOL Sports. Other vertical sites are slated to be rolled out with an emphasis on specialized sports fans, including one focused on Mixed Martial Arts.

"MediaGlow has started 2009 by reaching its largest audience to date and building core brands that are at scale."

"By leaning into the fragmentation of the Web, we are creating valuable brands that are driving engagement and attracting a larger audience," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

AOL says its redesigned homepage grew 5 percent in page views, 12 percent in unique visitors, a record 33 percent in total minutes and 6 percent in total visits year-over-year.

Bill Wilson

The jump in growth could be due to AOL’s efforts to become more open. It recently began allowing users to access email accounts from Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. It also allowed users to access social networking sites from its homepage including Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

In January AOL announced the creation of MediaGlow, which aims to, centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and expand its global reach. Under the MediaGlow umbrella AOL has plans to launch 30-targeted sites this year.

At the beginning of 2009 MediaGlow launched its first targeted site, FanHouse that replaced AOL Sports. Other vertical sites are slated to be rolled out with an emphasis on specialized sports fans, including one focused on Mixed Martial Arts.

"MediaGlow has started 2009 by reaching its largest audience to date and building core brands that are at scale."

"By leaning into the fragmentation of the Web, we are creating valuable brands that are driving engagement and attracting a larger audience," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

Unique visitors grew from a monthly average of 70.4 million to 73.4 million, and total minutes increased from 40 billion to 47 billion year-over-year, up 17 percent, according to comScore.

Bill Wilson
President
MediaGlow

Last week, AOL announced the launch of MediaGlow that centralizes the company’s publishing efforts and plans to launch 30-targeted sites in 2009.

"Over the past 18 months, we have successfully built a strong portfolio of valuable brands that are at scale and attracting larger, more engaged and more valuable audiences, and that are in leading positions in every major online category," said Bill Wilson, President, MediaGlow.

"The year-end comScore numbers prove that our strategy is working. And with the creation of MediaGlow, we have the opportunity to accelerate this growth in 2009 by leaning into audience fragmentation on the Web."

AOL’s properties continued to see solid growth in December, extending year-over-year growth in unique visitors to 23 consecutive months. Unique visitors in December rose 2 percent, page views climbed 101 percent and time spent increased 54 percent year-over-year.

In addition the company recently revamped AOL.com, opening up to third- party content, email and social networks in 2008, growing 7 percent in page views, 16 percent in unique visitors, 34 percent in total minutes and 14 percent in total visits, year-over-year.

MediaGlow joins AOL’s advertising platform, Platform-A along with its social media effort, Peoples Networks to become the third core business of the company.

AOL says over the past year its page views have increased 40 percent, engagement increased 20 percent and its audience grew to 70 million monthly visitors.

"Our vision was to rebuild AOL into three core businesses — publishing, advertising and social media. With the launch of MediaGlow, we have completed our goal in less than 18 months," said Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL.

"AOL now efficiently delivers the most relevant and engaging content and is able to uniquely maximize display advertising opportunities for advertisers and publishers across the Web. MediaGlow provides us with the ability to extend our publishing success and puts AOL in a very strong position for the future."

Bill Wilson
MediaGlow

Bill Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programming for AOL, will now be President of MediaGlow. Under Wilson AOL rebuilt its portal AOL.com while launching more than a dozen new targeted content sites in the past year.

"From our reinvented AOL.com to our vertical content sites, we are creating experiences that successfully reach key demographics and provide unique, relevant and valuable content to consumers and solutions for advertisers," said Wilson." As an ad-supported company, this is a huge asset."

AOL operates around 75 sites and plans to add more than 30 sites in 2009 focused on reality television, soap operas, horror films and the launch of a new pop culture site geared towards kids.