AOL posts

IAB's Digital Media Sales Certification program, established in 2012, is the first-ever educational standard for digital media sales teams, creating a professional benchmark for the digital advertising field. The program is created by and for industry experts and AOL will benefit by ensuring they have the most knowledgeable sales teams possible.

The certification knowledge areas include:

• Comprehending the Digital Advertising Ecosystem
• Selling Digital Media
• Managing Digital Advertising Campaigns
• Analyzing Campaign Performance

This certification is the highest industry credential for digital media sales professionals and it's a badge AOL's sales teams will wear proudly.

Click here to learn more about AOL Advertising.

Ned Desmond, COO of TechCrunch, and Matt Kaufman, president of CrunchBase (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

For the fourth year in a row, TechCrunch Disrupt descended on New York, bringing its trademark energy and celebration of innovation to the Manhattan Center. For the past three days – plus the Hackathon that took place over the weekend – the biggest names in tech and most promising new companies convened to discuss new trends and swap knowledge.

The stage was equally vibrant, thanks to sessions with industry leaders like Foursquare's Dennis Crowley, Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures and regular Disrupt speaker and triple-threat, Ashton Kutcher. Plus, TechCrunch launched the CrunchBase Venture Program – a partnership with 11 venture capital firms to turn CrunchBase into a comprehensive, accurate source for information on the portfolio companies of well-known venture capital firms. Eleven firms in total, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and 500 Startups, will track funding updates, staffing changes, launches and acquisitions, all in the name of helping people understand the dynamic world of tech.

Of course, it wouldn't be Disrupt without the signature Startup Battlefield, where companies competed in front of big-name judges like Marissa Mayer, David Tisch and Sam Yagan. After a fierce competition, the winner was Enigma, a Web service that scours more than 100,000 data sources and allows users to dig into publicly available but hard-to-find data.

For more information on TechCrunch Disrupt or to purchase tickets for their next event, click here.

Three years ago, AOL placed a big bet on video. Through the acquisitions of 5min Media and goviral and significant investments in video, AOL has grown to be the #1 premium curated video network. Our goal is to bridge the gap between TV and digital video – be it quality, reach or measurement.

At this year's NewFront we're looking to the future of video. We will showcase our high-quality original programming slate, unique advertising formats, powerful distribution at scale and industry-leading analytics.

We'll kick things off with our 2013 Summer/Fall original programming lineup that features a variety of content that we're creating across categories like food, sports, fashion, health, autos and more. We're partnering with well-known celebs and influencers on the rise who already have digital audiences, as well as the passion to grow their online footprint. AOL has the scale and data needed to produce great content that we know consumers want to watch.

We'll also announce the launch of Be On – a new branded entertainment platform. As the interest for native advertising continues to grow, we are helping brands become publishers. Brands can be smoothly integrated next to our amazing content. From creation to distribution to measurement. It's a global offering that includes the capabilities that we've been offering through the goviral platform plus even more.

We're bullish on measurement too. To date, there has been no apples-to-apples measurement for buyers to compare TV to digital video. We're ready to change that in a few ways. We've partnered with Nielsen on two different initiatives. The first, announced this morning, is a pilot program that will measure audiences for TV content viewed online. AOL is the only digital partner involved in this effort. The second is a collaboration that will measure the audience viewing AOL's library of over 620K premium videos against traditional TV. The AOL Video Reach (AVR) will provide audience measurement in the language that TV buyers know. Essentially, we'll be able to use comScore to measure ourselves against other web properties, and Nielsen to compare ourselves against TV.

Additionally, for the first time in history, digital inventory will be available in a traditional TV buying system through a partnership that AOL has forged with FreeWheel and Mediaocean. The market (broadcasters) cannot buy digital inventory today because we don't speak the same language. This deal allows broadcast buyers to compare AOL's inventory with TV inventory ... finally an apples to apples comparison.

We're ready to show the media industry that AOL is well-positioned for the merge of the digital and TV worlds as we continue our mission to bridge the gap between the two.

It's On!

AOL is proud to announce that we will be honored as a winner of the Uptime Institute Server Roundup for our efforts to improve data center efficiency around the globe at the upcoming Uptime Institute Symposium.

For the second year in a row, AOL has won for overall tally of servers removed. We decommissioned 8,253 servers in 2012, which has meant a total savings of almost $3 million from reduced utility costs, maintenance and recovery of asset resale/scrap. Environmental benefits were seen in the reduction of more than 16,000 tons of carbon emissions as well. Last year, AOL removed nearly 10,000 and saved over $5 million.

The annual Uptime Institute Server Roundup contest was introduced in October 2011 to raise awareness about the removal and recycling of comatose and obsolete IT equipment in an effort to reduce data center energy use. Uptime Institute invited companies around the globe to help address and solve this problem by participating in the Uptime Institute Server Roundup and AOL is delighted to be a part of it.

To learn more about AOL's corporate sustainability, click here.

.@aol wins @uptimeinstitute Award for the second year in a row! aol.it/115zdRq

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) April 18, 2013