AOL conceived to create a new type of media

In December, AOL becomes operationally independent, the company will no longer be managed directly by the parent company Time Warner. In connection with the new future, AOL has decided to create a new kind of media. The company will rely on its data about users, their search queries, data on their behavior in the network, etc., to predict which topics, news, photos, videos will be popular in the near future.

These forecasts will be announced to advertisers, who, thus, will be able to order the advertising they need “into the future,” foreseeing the interests of the masses. At the same time, the AOL edition (500 people) will not produce content on their own, but will order the writing of these materials and the creation of the necessary content for their network of freelancers (about 3,000 of them are planned), of course, on a paid basis.

Partly fundamentally, such a scheme is already being implemented in contextual advertising networks, for example, Yandex Direct and Google Adwords. They, after all, also make bets on the cost of clicks, hits on shows, etc. So the demand of the masses, the supply of media companies, the interests of advertisers come together. Behind the board is only the quality of journalism. It is not yet clear whether such a model will be able to give a society of media that will be able to fulfill a certain role as a watchdog.