Platform-A signs AXA-owned website as first UK customer

LONDON - Platform-A, the ad platform that combines AOL's various advertising businesses, has signed up AXA-owned Swiftcover.com as its first UK customer.

Condon:offering unmatched scale
Condon:offering unmatched scale

The platform, which officially opened its doors in the UK last week, will use its affiliate network Buy.at to direct Swiftcover.com's affiliate marketing activity.

The insurer chose Buy.at after trials with three affiliate networks, including OMG and DGM.

Under the new agreement, Buy.at will manage Swiftcover.com's search engine optimisation and comparison and cashback affiliates, including constituent brands Quidco, Line My Pocket and Insure for Cover.

The announcement comes only a month after Platform-A's Buy.at won a contract to handle affiliate activity for Glasses Direct.

Platform-A offers its UK clients a single point of contact to purchase and manage activity across its digital marketing channels.

At the UK launch, managing director Michael Steckler described some of the issues Platform-A will focus on, including a "need for very high end branded content that consumers can engage with, but also the need for reach and scale to target long-tail audiences."

Brendan Condon, managing director, international, Platform-A, added: "We're offering advertisers unmatched scale with Platform-A."

Duncan George, director of agency sales at Platform-A, said that for clients, the restructure would mean better results in terms of proactivity and delivery, aiming to "build a better dialogue with low spenders" as well as more web-savvy users.

The launch of Platform-A comes as rivals Microsoft and Yahoo roll out new integrated display ad platforms, as the three seek to capitalise on the display market, conceding the search market to Google.

Yahoo is launching its APT platform, which will allow publishers to quickly sell targeted ads across their own and their partners' sites.

Meanwhile, Microsoft plans to launch a simplified platform, although it has not revealed significant details to date.

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