» AOL and Rubicon have entered into a non-exclusive partnership in six different European markets that allows the yield optimiser to manage the non-premium display of AOL owned and operated inventory. The partnership covers all Ad.com inventory - with AOL recommending the Rubicon platform to its network partners. The deal extends to six countries in total, including Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain. Both parties were at pains to stress that the deal only applies to unsold ad inventory. Having shuttered a number of regional offices, AOL is clearly looking to refocus its efforts on stronger areas: AOL still has significant reach and share in Europe’s powerhouse display markets, namely France, Germany and the UK. There are no details of how much non-premium inventory AOL has in the six countries named above, but it would appear Rubicon has achieved a significant win here. The combined ad network market of these six countries has an estimated value of around 200 million euro – and growing. They have now got a foothold in markets, particularly Spain, that have been traditionally difficult to break into.

» Alenty has inked a deal with Unanimis this week to provide the UK ad network with its ad visibility and analytics platform. The deal, a first for the UK market, will allow Unanimis publishers to introduce a cost per exposure (let’s call it CPEX for argument’s sake) pricing model - made posssible by Alenty’s ability to measure time spent viewing specific ad units. Alenty has already partnered with Canal Plus in France, helping the leading publisher to introduce pricing based on a users’ exposure to an ad spot. Canal Plus has said that they have doubled revenue since implementing Alenty’s ad visibility and analytics tools, and moving to a CPEX model. Unanimis is presently testing the technology with a number of publishers, and a full roll-out expected in the summer. [IAB]