Aol acquires u.k. affiliate marketing firm buy.at

AOL has acquired U.K.-based international affiliate network buy.at for an undisclosed sum. The firm, which has business office in Greater London, Newcastle and most late New York, will be incorporated into ad.com ad web, part of AOL's Platform A organisation.

The news comes as AOL's parent company, Time Charles Dudley Warner, announced it would offprint the unit's ad-related offerings from its entree business and warned Q1 ad gross will be flat.

The buy.at deal is the fifth ad-related acquisition by AOL in the past year, with others including contextual advertising firm Quigo and behavioral targeting company Tacoda. Before this week the company announced the purchase of Goowy, a appliance technology firm it plans to use to enhance its appliance ad offerings.

"The buy.at engineering will complement the other solutions on Platform A absolutely, and will enable us to provide solutions for advertisers that we didn't already have," said Brendan Condon, MD International of ad.com.

Quoted in a press release, AOL president and CEO Randy Falco said, "This acquisition further enhances our Platform A ad offerings by enabling us to offer a new set of advertizer and publishing house products."

Buy.at late opened an business office on New York's Wall Street with the purpose of "shaking up" the U.S. Affiliate market. Speech production with ClickZ news in Dec, buy.at President Malcolm Cowley described plans to sharply expand its operations here, sentiments that were echoed today by buy.at CEO Kevin Cornils.

"We're focus on the U.S. Marketplace and on edifice a U.S. Presence," Cornils said. "This puts us in a stronger position from which to do that."

Jeff Molander, CEO of affiliate marketing consulting firm Molander and Associates states that the news should come as no surprise, in light of AOL's effort to acquire TradeDoubler last year. He added he sees an opportunity for buy.at to serve advertisers through focused partnerships with ad agencies that compete with the likes of Linkshare, Commission Junction and DoubleClick Performics.

"As I see it, buy.at is strategically positioned to capitalize on an under-served, lucrative niche -- large ad agencies which already have search marketing expertise" he said.

This story has been updated to clarify Jeff Molander's statement on buy.at's market position.