AOL Canada, which is working to change its brand perception among both consumers and advertisers, has hired Leanne Gibson as its director of ad products.
Gibson comes to AOL from Torstar’s digital sales arm, Olive Media, and has also spent time in sales and business development with companies including Yahoo Canada, Excite Canada and Quebecor Media.
She will work with AOL’s Canadian and U.S. teams to develop new and innovative ad solutions that incorporate everything from online video to mobile.
“We’re thrilled to have Leanne on board,” AOL Canada general manager Graham Moysey told Marketing. “She has a proven track record of success and an incredible reputation in the market. She’s going to be paying a lot of attention to our video solutions in addition to our mobile solution.”
The company’s recent purchase of video syndication network 5 Min Media, which aggregates tens of thousands of videos from 800 partner sites across 21 different verticals–including home, food, beauty/fashion and health–will enhance its reputation in the growing video advertising category, he said.
Once thought of primarily as an internet access business, AOL has re-cast itself as an internet media company offering specialized content devoted to everything from music and finance (Spinner.ca and WalletPop.ca respectively) to tech and sports (Engadget.ca and Fanhouse.ca). Its assorted online entities have about 9.2 million monthly unique visitors a month according to comScore data.
The company also continues to work with its ad partners to bolster and refine its advertising solutions. In the U.S. it recently introduced a test project called “Project Devil,” developed in collaboration with its six largest agency partners.
The project is devoted to rethinking how web pages should look, with less clutter and a more streamlined approach. The result is a web page in which 70% is devoted to content and the remaining 30% to a single ad that can incorporate everything from embedded media to social media components.
According to Moysey, Project Devil has produced notable increases in the amount of time users spend with a page. Advertiser demand, he added, is “overwhelming.”
“Nobody in this market is aggressively altering what the internet looks like, and I think changing the format… is a really powerful way to do that,” he said.
AOL has hired 17 people since Moysey arrived from Canwest, where he oversaw its digital media division, in August. The company’s focus in the first quarter of 2011, he added, will be bolstering content in key areas including video, automotive, lifestyle, finance and technology.
