AOL Portal Marketing Strategy

AOL had initially considered spending as much as $50 million on television ads to promote the portal. But that changed after the company noticed that the biggest source of traffic to its free music site was free and paid listings on other search engines. (via the New York Times)

AOL uses landing pages. For example, people looking for music information are directed to AOL Music, not the AOL homepage. Here’s an example of AOL ad: