Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

AOL: Display ads up, profits and subscriptions down

By
Image used with permission by copyright holder

AOL has released its financial results for the first quarter of 2011, and the company is eager to position its latest figures as the start of a turnaround for the beleaguered online media company. And AOL does have some numbers to crow about: revenue it earns from display advertising across its properties increased 4 percent to $130.5 million during the quarter, the first time AOL has seen an uptick in its display advertising numbers since the end of 2007. However, the company’s overall advertising revenue remained “essentially flat”, subscription revenue declined 24 percent compared to a year ago as the company continues to shed Internet access subscribers, and total revenues for the company were down to $551.4 million for the quarter, down 17 percent from a year ago. AOL’s overall income for the quarter was a mere $4.7 million, down 86 percent compared to a year ago.

“Today represents an important milestone in the turnaround of AOL as global display revenue grew for the first time since Q4 2007,” said AOL chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong, in a statement. “I am proud of the work completed thus far and we remain focused on accelerating our momentum through continued execution of our strategy to become the premier digital content company.”

Recommended Videos

AOL, now based in New York, has been struggling to convert itself from a walled-garden Internet access provider to a broad collection of ad-supported sites and services since its separate from Time Warner in 2009. AOL’s strategy for broadening its content offerings has been largely based on acquisitions: in addition to its recent high-profile takeover of The Huffington Post earlier this year for $315 million (and commensurate layoffs), AOL has been building on its 2009 acquisition of local-news oriented Patch and attempting to build on its tech blog acquisitions like Engadget and Techcrunch.

Although an uptick in revenue for display advertising may bode well for AOL’s future, it was the only non-negative number in the company’s quarterly results, and AOL still faces significant challenges. Search and contextual ad revenue for the quarter was down 21 percent fo $95.8 million, and overall advertising revenue was down 11 percent to $354.3 million for the quarter. A> says it has about $381.8 million in cash in the bank.

Investors nonetheless responded positively to AOL’s results, sending the company’s stock as much as 10 percent higher in trading after the results were released.

Topics
Geoff Duncan
Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Microsoft’s Copilot Vision arrives to surf the web with select users
The Copilot logo

Microsoft's new Copilot Vision feature that can “see what you see, and hear what you hear” while you navigate the internet is finally being made available, though only to a limited number of Copilot Pro subscribers in the U.S.

"Starting today, we are introducing an experience where – with your permission – Copilot can now understand the full context of what you’re doing online," according to a Microsoft blog post. "When you choose to enable Copilot Vision, it sees the page you're on, it reads along with you, and you can talk through the problem you're facing together."

Read more
This HP Envy 2-in-1 is $300 off and has a gorgeous 16-inch 2K screen
The HP Envy x360 2-in-1 laptop on a white background.

Best Buy continues to offer some fantastic laptop deals with a huge $300 off the HP Envy 2-in-1 16-inch 2K Touchscreen laptop. It normally costs $900 but right now, you can buy it for just $600 which is a fantastic price for a laptop with such a good screen. It’d make the perfect gift for someone but also it’s simply a good laptop for all your working needs. Here’s a quick overview of what it has to offer.

Why you should buy the HP Envy 2-in-1 laptop
HP is one of the best laptop brands around and it has a particular penchant for making some of the best 2-in-1 laptops. With this HP Envy 2-in-1 laptop, you get some great hardware. It has an Intel Core Ultra 5 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. For this price, you can’t really go wrong with these specs.

Read more
Black Friday’s best PC hardware deal is still live, and you’re sleeping on it
The Ryzen 5 7600X sitting among thermal paste and RAM.

I'm not mad, just disappointed. A couple of weeks ago, I covered the insane deal that essentially allowed you to score a Ryzen 5 7600X -- still one of the best processors you can buy -- for just $105. At the time, I thought, surely, this will sell out in a matter of hours. Who would pass up on a deal this good? And yet, two weeks later to the day, the craziest deal I've seen during all of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is still live on Newegg.

Let me break down the deal again. You can get the Ryzen 5 7600X for $225, which is not a good price. However, you can get an additional $30 off by using promo code DLCDZ342, bringing the price down to $195. The kicker is that you also get a free Team Group MP44L 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. That's a $90 hard drive that Newegg is just throwing in with a CPU that's already available for a decent price. The fact that the deal is still live suggests either Newegg has a ton of inventory, or not enough people know about this sale.

Read more