AOL CEO’s Pivot to Ad Tech Pays Dividends

When Tim Armstrong took the reins at AOL in 2009, he had a clear plan: AOL was going to be a top-notch digital content company that would lure premium marketers to its properties. He put the company’s considerable cash pile to use acquiring TechCrunch in 2010 and the Huffington Post in 2011. But somewhere along the way, Armstrong saw the ground shifting in the digital advertising business, and smelled an opportunity.

Advertising was about to become more “programmatic” -- that is, bought and sold through powerful software driven by rich data. And he jumped in, with a spree of acquisitions and investments that catapulted AOL to the upper ranks of the ad tech sector, including a $405 million deal for the video ad exchange company Adap.tv in 2013 as well as the Web content personalization startup Gravity in early 2014. Such bets by Armstrong paid off handsomely when Verizon pledged to plunk down $4.4 billion for the company. Verizon executive John Stratton said the phone giant’s “principal interest was around the ad tech platform.”