Washington Post: AOL Says It Will Let New Acquisition Maintain Its Course

AOL CEO Jonathan Miller said he plans to let Advertising.com function largely as it has in the past, without a great deal of interference from the AOL mother ship. He pointed to the Yahoo-Overture merger as a good example of one where the purchasing media company let a newly-acquired division continue to flourish. AOL has been criticized in the past for stifling acquired properties, the most famous being its $4.2 billion Netscape division, which was first handcuffed to the non-Internet portion of AOL and then gradually gutted.

Miller said he expects the union with Advertising.com to help sell the unsold inventory the AOL network continues to carry, which may suggest that Advertising.com staff will have an opportunity to grow their territory at the expense of existing AOL salespeople.