Randy Falco, the new CEO of AOL, gave his first public speech yesterday at an iMedia advertising conference, and the site has a full rundown here, and well as a separate interview here. Mostly safely bland, but some added emphasis from him on AOL’s scale and how TV networks and studios will have no choice but to work with portals.
He argued that the value of networks is only increasing, as is each network’s share of marketing dollars. “Today, Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN have a combined market share of 58 percent. That’s up from 48 percent just two years ago. What’s more, there’s a big fall-off from these big four to the next tier of companies. While these four all have a billion dollars plus in annual ad revenues, the number five company, CNET, has less than four hundred million dollars,” Falco said. What the networks bring to the table is a combo-platter of scale, innovative solutions, research data and targeting expertise. All of which, Falco predicts, will lead to increased network growth in the future.
From the interview: “I actually think that the smart broadcasters are going to find ways to partner with the internet companies and take full advantage of these big events. I do not think that they can do it by themselves, because I don’t believe that the websites popping up on traditional media will ever be able to scale up the same way that an AOL can.”