America Online 2014 Annual Report Download - page 55

AOL INC.
PART II—ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION
AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
Audience Metrics
We utilize unique visitor numbers to evaluate our performance, as unique visitor numbers provide an
indication of our consumer reach. Although our consumer reach does not correlate directly to advertising
revenue, we believe that our ability to broadly reach diverse demographic and geographic audiences is attractive
to brand advertisers seeking to promote their brands to a variety of consumers without having to partner with
multiple content providers. Multi-platform unique visitor metrics represent a measure of AOL Properties
unduplicated audience across multiple digital platforms (desktop computers, smartphones and tablets). AOL
multi-platform unique visitors represent the estimated number of individuals who visited any content of a website
or application owned by AOL or for which the traffic has been assigned to AOL by the owner during the
applicable measurement period. Additionally, AOL multi-platform unique visitor metrics also include visitors to
AOL’s syndicated video content distributed on third party sites. Desktop unique visitors to AOL Properties
represent the estimated number of individuals who visited any content of a website or application owned by AOL
or for which the traffic has been assigned to AOL by the owner during the applicable measurement period via a
desktop computer.
AOL Properties unique visitor numbers include unique visitors attributable to co-branded websites owned
by third parties for which certain criteria have been met, including the requirement that the internet traffic has
been assigned to us. For the year ended December 31, 2014, approximately 8.9% of our desktop unique visitors
to AOL Properties were attributable to co-branded websites owned by third parties where the internet traffic was
assigned to us, compared to approximately 8.0% for the year ended December 31, 2013.
The source for our unique visitor information is a third party (comScore Media Metrix).
The following table presents our unique visitor metrics for the periods presented (in millions):
Years Ended December 31,
2014 2013 2012
Domestic average monthly AOL multi-platform unique visitors ................... 179 152* N/A*
Domestic average monthly desktop unique visitors to AOL Properties .............. 109 116 111
* December 31, 2013 represents a monthly average for February through December 2013, as comScore only
began reporting the multi-platform metric in February 2013. Multi-platform data was not reported by
comScore for 2012.
Subscriber Metrics
The number of domestic AOL subscribers was 2.2 million, 2.5 million and 2.8 million at December 31,
2014, 2013 and 2012, respectively. Average monthly subscription revenue per AOL subscriber (“ARPU”) was
$20.70, $19.85 and $18.39 for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012, respectively. We include in
our subscriber numbers individuals, households and entities that have provided billing information and
completed the registration process sufficiently to allow for an initial log-on to the AOL access service. Our
subscriber numbers include subscribers participating in introductory free-trial periods and subscribers that are
paying no monthly fees or reduced monthly fees through member service and retention programs. Individuals
who have only registered for our free offerings, including subscribers who have migrated from paid subscription
plans, are not included in the AOL subscriber numbers. Additionally, only those individuals whose subscription
includes AOL-brand dial-up access service are included in the AOL subscriber numbers. Subscribers to our
subscription access service also contribute to our ability to generate advertising revenues.
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