AOL Debuts Makeover That's All About Mobile Video and Social-Friendly Content

AOL is unveiling a data-driven site overhaul that should give marketers a sense of how it will zero in on mobile video and branded content as it plots its future. The revamp comes less than a month after Verizon's $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL and is based on a load of the publisher's stats. For instance, between April 2014 and April 2015, video views grew 94 percent, and 90 percent of articles now have a video attached. On mobile, unique visits are up 80 percent over last June. And multiplatform visits -- folks who read AOL's content across multiple devices -- grew 21 percent.

While those figures are intriguing, the traffic isn't from users visiting AOL.com directly. Instead, they are finding video links in social feeds. With that in mind, each article and video is meant to live as a piece of stand-alone content. For example, headlines like "White House candidates struggle in cyber space" and pieces about Vine celebrities Jack and Jack are likely to be buzzy on social media and prompt users to click on an article. "We're doing a better job of publishing video across social platforms -- there are plenty of people who aren't going to AOL as part of their daily routine," said Maureen Sullivan, president of AOL.com. "They may see some of our video content in their social stream, and then they find themselves in the AOL environment. It's almost like finding people through the side doors."