AOL seems on the verge of going all-in on a plan to forego member revenue in favor of advertising revenue. Here’s a New York Times story, here’s a Business 2.0 story and here’s a Wall Street perspective from Minyanville.

I think Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Capital quoted in the Times story, nails it: “AOL is a brand in search of a strategy.” Their ad revenue is up, even though their percentage slice of the overall online ad pie is being nibbled away and they’re hemmoraging members like crazy. Giving away all their content for free (especially if they can genuinely leverage all the Time Warner properties) and focusing on ads seems like their best bet at this point, even if that bet means they’re playing a big blind of a coupla billion bucks in dialup and high-speed subscriber fees.

But what cards are the other players at the table — Google, Yahoo! and MSN — holding? And where will all the players be when the river card is turned for this hand?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 6:09 am and is filed under Internet Stuff.