Remember back when AOL was a successful player on the web? This was evident in many ways, but the one that always struck me as a particularly good example, was the mainstream media buyers' use of AOL keywords. AOL was so ubiquitous back then, that advertisers were confident enough that TV viewers would know what they meant when they said use AOL keyword XYZ to learn more.
Well that era is over as I just saw a Pontiac commercial that instead of referencing AOL instead ended with, "Google Pontiac to learn more." Wow. Not only has AOL been dumped, but Pontiac is banking on their natural result listing in Google staying number 1. Anyone want to try and bump from the slot? Shouldn't be too hard. The Pontiac site has only a PR 8 with a mere 56+ million competitors.
In somewhat related news, AOL's CTO was forced to resign and two other employees were fired for releasing confidential search data. The data consisted of 20 million Internet search requests made by about 650,000 people in May. Strange that such a hiccup, although certainly a no-no, resulted in a CTO's ouster. An wrinkle in all of this is that AOL has been quoted as having previously declared that they keep only 30 days worth of detail search data. Hmmmm…
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