AOL's Homepage Revamp Aims For TV Network Model
You don't usually hear the word “dayparts” when talking about a website's homepage, but the new AOL (NYSE: AOL) homepage that's going live Monday morning has a lot in common with the content values of a TV network.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the third act in a long AOL homepage reinvention cycle: the company turned the Netscape site into 'a newspaper of sorts' back in 2006, relaunched news around blog conventions in 2007, and that same year analysts flagged that ad growth was vital to any AOL remake. The difference in 2010 is that AOL finally has original content to program: since June it has been hiring hundreds of journalists and reorganizing its content division, and it bought 5Min Media in September for a reported ~$65 million to stock up on video.
The new homepage applies a TV network's core discipline — dayparts, or programming tuned to when audiences visit — to that content library, turning the page from a links directory into a schedule. The timing matters because the homepage is where AOL can cross-promote its newer bets, including the confirmed 'Wow!' Groupon clone launched into daily deals earlier this month.
First-order effects
- Advertisers buying AOL's homepage gain daypart-based placement — morning, midday, evening slots — replacing static banner inventory with scheduled audience packages borrowed from TV upfronts.
- AOL's newly hired editorial staff and freshly acquired 5Min video catalog get a guaranteed high-traffic distribution surface on Monday morning, giving the June reorganization a consumer-facing storefront.
Second-order effects
- Rival portals must answer with their own scheduling logic: if homepage ads sell by time-of-day rather than position alone, Yahoo and MSN face pressure to repackage inventory the same way or cede the brand-ad dollar.
- The homepage becomes the promotion engine for AOL's adjacent bets — 'Wow!' daily deals and Patch hyperlocal sites can be rotated into daypart slots, lowering customer-acquisition costs for properties that would otherwise buy traffic outright.
Third-order effects
- If daypart programming holds engagement, portals complete their convergence with broadcasters: content companies compete on scheduling and audience flow rather than link aggregation, and homepage ad pricing decouples from raw pageviews.
- The move tests whether an access-surface owner can become a programmer — a structural question for every platform that controls a front door to the web but does not yet control what runs behind it.
The trend: Web portals are absorbing broadcast television's programming economics — scheduled dayparts, packaged audiences, promoted slates — as they convert homepages from directories into content networks.