They say, of fastly dropping markets, that one should never try to catch a falling knife. In trying to sell AOL, Time Warner could be letting a sharp blade fly at Yahoo, the most likely buyer for the troubled Internet business. Will a deal happen? If so, for how much? No one really knows, but everyone wants this…

Everybody who's anybody has had an online-advertising exchange since the spring of 2007, when Google announced it would acquire DoubleClick and Yahoo overpaid for Right Media. AOL's advertising network, Platform-A, is finally catching up. Today it announced BidPlace, which top exec Lynda Clarizio told PaidContent…

Time Warner CFO John Martin told investors yesterday that while online subsidiary AOL's ad network Platform-A "had been growing like a weed,'' the company now doubts it will hit its revenue targets. "We have seen some cancellations," Martin told conferencegoers. "It gives us pause in terms of our confidence to ramp…

Since it acquired Tacoda last summer, AOL has done little with it but push top executives out of the company. 97 employees came over in the buy. Today, only 35 remain. The most notable departure was former Tacoda CEO Curt Viebranz, whom AOL promoted to head its advertising business, Platform-A. Viebranz was fired…

For the makers of widgets, those annoy-your-friends applications littering social networks, it's fractions of pennies from heaven: AOL ad network Platform-A has promised Facebook and Bebo widget developers that it can guarantee them "one of the industry’s highest" CPM — cost per thousand pageviews — rates if they…

Ad agency conglomerate Publicis Groupe announced it will create a new "open source" ad network running on inventory from AOL's Platform-A, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Everyone knows the world does not need yet another ad network, so why is Publicis doing it? We asked AdWeek's Brian Morrissey. The five-word version:…

Widgetmaker Slide hired AOL's former director of national sales, Jason Bitensky, and opened a New York office in the West Village, Kara Swisher reports. Slide CEO and founder Max Levchin says his company followed the bright lights to the big city because

Whispers on Wall Street predicted Time Warner would today report AOL ad revenues down 30 percent since last year, SAI reports. Didn't happen, but hold the cartwheels. AOL only grew 1 percent since the same quarter last year. Paid search and AOL's ad networks, which place ad on third-party sites, drove the growth,…

Here's AOL ad network Platform-A's new logo. According to president Lynda Clarizio, it "communicates our distinct competitive advantage of scale and reach." The real message: The new logo brands Platform-A as distinct from AOL. Why? Clarizio is AOL's seventh advertising boss since 2001. The turmoil has not helped…

AOL will layoff "less than 500" from its Platform-A advertising division starting today. The severance packages "stink," a source tells Silicon Alley Insider . AOL calls the cuts an ongoing "alignment," not a layoff, and suggests the number headed for the street is closer to 100.

AOL moved into its new New York headquarters today, and new ad boss Lynda Clarizio has roped Verizon into paying a portion of the lease. The companies announced a deal today that will make AOL's Platform-A the exclusive manager of Verizon's Web and wireless ads. That inventory includes 94 million pageviews a month.…

Curt Viebranz, the CEO of AOL's ad sales unit Platform A, is leaving. AOL did not say why, but "sources" are suddenly tipping off a lot of blogs that he was fired. Viebranz, former head of Tacoda, joined Platform A at its inception last fall. The unit was supposed to house ad sales for all AOL units. Another AOL…

So rarely do the executives who strike deals have to execute them. The hard work of fitting acquired companies together is usually left to less-glamorous grunts. How satisfying, then, to see Jon Werther, recently in charge of business development at AOL, made responsible for "integrated operations". Werther will…