AOL Expands HP; Moves Headquarters to New York

AOL, a unit of Time Warner, said Monday that it had expanded its deal with Hewlett-Packard beyond the United States and was realigning its advertising business.

AOL also said it would move its corporate headquarters to New York City, where its advertising executives are already based, and had renamed its advertising division with a bid to improve revenue by more tightly integrating the business.

The company said it would now provide computer maker HP with co-branded local-language versions of its Internet portal, its toolbar and its search services for use on HP desktop and notebook computers in two dozen countries around the world.

AOL has already worked with HP for about a year in the United States, providing a co-branded AOL and HP portal as the default home page for HP consumer computers sold here.

The company, which has bought several advertising companies as part of its shift in focus from subscription-based services to advertising, also said it had renamed its advertising business Platform A. It was previously known as AOL Media Networks.

Time Warner had surprised investors at the end of the second quarter by cutting its 2007 advertising sales growth forecast. AOL said it aimed to improve ad revenue by integrating various ad units more closely under the Platform A entity.

"The strategy behind creating the new entity is to drive revenue and results," said spokeswoman Anne Bentley. "We're hopeful we'll start to favorable results almost immediately."

Bentley said the company, currently headquartered in Dulles, Virginia, already has several hundreds of employees based in New York in its programming and advertising teams.

Many of the company's senior executives will also be based in New York, including Chief Executive Randy Falco and Chief Operating officer Ron Grant, Bentley said.

The company said that executives would continue to spend some time in Dulles and that AOL would keep offices in Dulles; Mountain View, California; and other places.

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