America Online 2014 Annual Report Download - page 19

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Segments
Our business is organized into the following three reportable segments:
• The Brand Group, which consists of our portfolio of distinct and unique content brands as well as
certain service brands. The results for this segment include the performance of our advertising
offerings on a number of owned and operated sites, such as AOL.com, The Huffington Post,
TechCrunch and MapQuest. The Brand Group also includes co-branded websites owned or operated by
third parties for which certain criteria have been met, including the requirement that the internet traffic
has been assigned to us.
• The Membership Group, which consists of offerings that serve our registered account holders, both free
and paid. The results for this segment include the performance of our subscription offerings and
advertising offerings on Membership Group properties, including communications products, such as
AOL Mail.
• AOL Platforms (formerly referred to as AOL Networks), which consists of interconnected
programmatic (automated) and premium advertising offerings and technologies that advertisers and
publishers use to reach consumers across all devices (i.e., desktop, mobile and television), and includes
formats such as display, including video and social formats. AOL Platforms also provides additional
technology solutions that enhance our programmatic platforms and enable advertisers and publishers to
have an end-to-end open programmatic media buying experience by providing access to Third Party
Properties, AOL Properties ad serving, content personalization, targeting, attribution and cross-channel
analytics. The results for this segment include the performance of Advertising.com (“Ad.com”),
AdLearn Open Platform (“AOP”), Adap.tv, Marketplace by ADTECH (“Marketplace”), AOL On, Be
On, ADTECH, Gravity, Vidible and Convertro.
In addition to the above reportable segments, we have a corporate and other category that includes activities
that are not directly attributable or allocable to a specific segment. This category primarily consists of broad
corporate functions and includes legal, human resources, accounting, analytics, finance and marketing as well as
activities and costs not directly attributable to a particular segment such as restructuring costs, tax settlements
and other general business costs. The corporate and other category also includes the elimination of revenues
resulting from transactions between the Brand Group, Membership Group and AOL Platforms segments.
For financial information about our segments for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013, and 2012, see
“Note 12” in our accompanying consolidated financial statements and “Item 7-Management’s Discussion and
Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.”
The Brand Group
The Brand Group seeks to be a leading publisher of relevant and engaging online content and a provider of
engaging online consumer products and services, by utilizing highly scalable publishing platforms and content
management systems. We generate advertising revenues in the Brand Group primarily through display
advertising (which includes video advertising) and search advertising. The Brand Group consists of our portfolio
of distinct and unique content brands as well as certain service brands with a focus on news, women/lifestyle and
technology. Through our diverse network of sites, we seek to reach a global audience on many platforms and
across all devices. With consumers’ increasingly shifting to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, we
continue to focus our efforts on creating a better user experience across formats and devices. Additionally we
offer advertisers and agencies powerful, comprehensive and efficient online tools to effectively deliver
advertising and to reach targeted audiences across Brand Group properties on all internet-enabled devices. We
also offer and sell native advertising to advertisers. Our native advertising offerings include enabling advertisers
to sponsor or publish content on our sites, that is aligned with the advertiser’s brand values and messaging, while
being relevant to the consumer experience on the sites.
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