AdWeek: AOL to Tout 9.0 Optimized in $10 Mil. Online Campaign

AdWeek's Ann Mack successfully ferreted out the spending levels for AOL's highly-touted new online campaign for its new software version. She cites anonymous sources as indicating a budget of about $10 million. What remains unclear is how much, if any, of this money will be spent in the old-school Time Warner method of trading insertion orders between in-house properties. A couple years ago the media company was castigated for booking a majority of its ad revenues in what turned out to be window-dressed internal barter deals.

Since the company now claims the goal of reaching four out of five Internet users with this new campaign, it seems like they have to involve some outside media companies, unless of course, they believe their own demographic research. Since their existing readers and viewers have already been blitzed by AOL ads to the point of brainwashing, spending outside the company walls will likely prove much more effective.