AOL (NYSE: AOL), which has aggressively pursued a strategy to improve user experience and position itself as a source of high-end online video, reported fourth quarter revenues of $596 million, down 26 percent from last year's $806.7 million, but ahead of the $587.4 million analysts had expected from the company.
The company said it saw video streams and viewers rise to 406 million streams and 49 million viewers in December, up 106 percent and 84 percent respectively since September 2010, and said that, on the year, it has seen video views increase 400 percent.
CEO Tim Armstrong, during Wednesday morning's earnings call, said video "is a major component" of the company's strategy for 2011, the year, he said, that AOL will stop focusing on its turnaround and begin to focus on it's comeback.
"I am very proud of what we accomplished in 2010 as we began the year with a significant restructuring of AOL and ended the year with a significantly improved balance sheet, a number of exciting new products and a new culture focused on winning," said AOL chief exec Tim Armstrong. "We have set aggressive goals for ourselves in 2011 in pursuit of capturing the growing opportunity ahead of us."
AOL said it will remain focused on improving its content offerings internally and in partnership with premium content providers. Recently, AOL launched original web video series on AOL.com, PopEater, AOL Kids, KitchenDaily and Stylelist and entered into strategic partnerships with Sporting News, Everyday Health and Move, Inc.
For more:
- see this release
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