By Kenneth Li
divisionCanadaIndiaTaiwan
By autumn, it will also introduce versions of its video
portal, AOL Video ( http://video.aol ), in the United
Kingdom, France and Germany, AOL Video senior vice president
Fred McIntyre said in an interview.
The expansion is part of Time Warner's plans to refashion
AOL as a free, advertising-dependent Web site, as well as to
transform itself into a one-stop shop for advertising services
for other companies.
"If you look at usage patterns on online video, it is the
first global broadband user behavior," McIntyre said. "It
happened everywhere in the world at the same time."
International availability of online videos from the United
States has been held up by copyright licenses, which are
negotiated on a regional basis, Internet executives said this
week at the Reuters Global Media and Telecoms Summit.
But AOL said it has sealed deals with local programming
partners for its regional sites. The availability of shows from
U.S. programming partners, such as Hulu, a joint venture of
News Corp and General Electric's NBC Universal, or CBS Corp, is
unclear and varies depending on partners
The foundation of the services is built around AOL's video
search technology, Truveo, which has indexed, or searched and
sorted related information on than 170 million videos in 16
countries including: Russia, Hong Kong, Germany and France.
"What users are interested in, and what the biggest
problems are, usually is about not being able to find what
they're looking for," McIntyre said.
As part of AOL's expansion, it will also begin offering
local versions of its men's lifestyle site Asylum in the United
Kingdom, India, Australia and New Zealand, and Italy. Each
region will have a local editor that will syndicate programming
from the U.S. version as well as create local content.
Asylum, launched in the United States in December, will
also be introduced in other parts of Europe and South America
this year.
Despite its sluggish online advertising growth over the
last few quarters, AOL has been riding a high, attracting
record numbers of visitors, according to comScore Media Metrix.
Unique visitors to AOL's programming sites rose 12 percent
to 55.4 million in April, its seventh consecutive month of
growth.
But it has yet to generate bigger ad sales from its
popularity.
(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
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