AOL launches its alternative to 'walled garden' in Southeast Asia
AOL has launched a new service for publishers in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the 'walled garden' companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple. Called ONE, it offers a range of technology across a single, unified platform that can help with audience engagement and analytics, content distribution and revenue management, allowing publishers to sell inventory across channels, including video, mobile and linear TV.

AOL has launched its ONE by AOL: Publishers service into Southeast Asia, hoping to offer publishers in the region an alternative to the ‘walled garden’ players such as Google, Facebook and Apple, due to having a more open approach to its ecosystem.

The offering first launched in the US and then Europe and positions AOL as a partner to publishers, with a stack of technology that can help with services such as audience engagement and analytics, content distribution and revenue management. AOL says its total investment in “publisher-first technology” has reached $1 billion.

In January it added AdelphD to its offering, which lets publishers identify the best prices for impressions.

Speaking to The Drum about the launch, Henk van Niekerk, global head of publisher services at AOL, said: “Over have acquired over the last several years technologies and One is a combination of bringing them together under one brand but more than just the branding, it’s bringing them to work more with each other, such as passing data between the tools of having a single sign on. It can get very complex when you have to work across multiple platforms.”

The platform allows publishers to sell inventory across channels, including video, mobile and linear TV. AOL said the service is likely to be adopted by publishers it already works with in the market.

“We’ve always traditionally been strong across our product suites in APAC, for us this is really a continuation of the work we do with publishers but offering them more of the suite of tools we have now.

“We are not starting from scratch. Many of our publishers here, such as Brightcom, is a good example of a publisher that we have worked with for a couple of years. We see them adopt more and more of our tools as we bring them to market,” said van Niekerk.

Dan Strachotta, managing director, APAC at Brightcom, commented:, “Brightcom is already leveraging multiple AOL publisher technologies so we’re excited to see the additional benefits the unified platform will bring. It’s an exciting step, enabling the aggregation of more mediums for the same audience, bringing greater efficiencies and better outcomes for clients”.