AOL Blog

We are thrilled to announce today that Patch has signed two-time All-Star and four-time Golden Glove winner Mark Teixeira as "Commissioner of Patch Baseball"! Patch is all about hometown and neighborhood, and what's more hometown than baseball? Mark will answer questions from residents of Patch towns, share baseball tips, post exclusive videos, and offer young athletes some advice about healthful eating and staying in shape. Mark is a resident of a Patch town, grew up in another, and is an avid Patch user and supporter. We're very excited to have him on the team!

Made with love by our two new AOL Artists, today we unveil five new canvases on AOL.com by married couple Tom Burtonwood and Holly Holmes.

Holly Holmes is a painter, sculptor, teacher, and curator who resides in Oak Park, Chicago. She created two beautiful watercolor works for AOL, entitled Blue Netting and Streaming (below). Her work is heavily influenced from nature, books, science, and "experiences of the everyday," said Holly.

Tom Burtonwood's three new canvases - Floating Divs (below), Alpha Blocks, and HTML Paint - are inspired by the alphabet, HTML and QR codes. In the studio he makes hard-edged geometric compositions in two and three dimensions with a "dash of 8-bit voxel blocks," according to Tom. He also teaches at Columbia College and the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

Together, the couple co-run What It Is, a project space and gallery in Oak Park. Click here to learn more about Tom and Holly on AOLArtists.com.

Back in March, Blake Mycoskie, Founder and Chief Shoe Giver of TOMS, stopped by our offices to share the story of TOMS, the impact his revolutionary one-for-one model has had on the world, and explain why the One Day without Shoes campaign plays such an integral part in his company's mission.

Last year, more than 1,000 AOLers went barefoot and due to the amazing employee response we received, we decided to increase our impact and help spread the word not just to employees, but to our clients and consumers as well. In order to do this, we launched the 100,000 Voices Challenge on AOL Impact, a social media campaign aimed to spread the word by reaching 100,000 people with the One Day Without Shoes (ODWS). You can learn more about the 100,000 challenge by visiting our ODWS page on AOL Impact, and also be entered to win a $50 TOMS gift card *

We are excited to announce that we blew past our initial goal of 100,000, and were able to reach over 1,000,000 people (and still growing) with the ODWS message! We were able to do this by leveraging all of our best-in-class assets to spread the word. Here's how we did it:

• We donated a TOMS One Day Without Shoes mail sign in page that ran from April 7th to April 9th. The sign in page reaches an average of 10 million impressions a day**
• Our about.me team encouraged consumers to change their profile pages to help raise awareness and blogged about the event.
• AOL Advertising offered up a Style Your Sole party to the agency who was able to best evangelize their employees to share the word.
• MapQuest donated advertising space on top of every map today to raise awareness about the campaign.
• AOL Artists around the world are pledging to go barefoot with AOL as well. Check out AOL Artists' Tumblr for updates on which artists are going barefoot and to see them in action.
• Inside AOL offices, AOLers are celebrating barefoot with activations like TOMS themed pedicures and foot massages.
• We shared the campaign in taxicab spots that ran in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston (check out the video below).

We encourage you to join us in who are kicking off their shoes today to spread awareness – you may just have a big impact on a child's life.

*Contest ends 11: 59PM ET on 4/10
**Internal AOL data

If you can dream it, you can pin it. Heck, even if you can't dream it, someone else dreamt it and you can just 're-pin' it. Unless you have been living on a remote island in the south pacific for past six months, you've probably heard about the tremendously popular social platform that enables people to create pin boards of things they love or are inspired by, called Pinterest. Travel, be it a place you've visited or a place you like to go to, is a big part of what people share on Pinterest. We thought we'd make travel 'pinning' even better by giving people the option to create maps that work with Pinterest so each trip has context to followers.

Here are some cool examples of how people on Pinterest use MapQuest to make their travel related pins even cooler.


How does it work? It's super easy, if you just want a map of a location, simply create your map on MapQuest and then click the "Pin It" Button at the top right of the MapQuest page. This will create a map image and link that you can then upload to Pinterest and add to your 'pin board'.
Careful...it's addictive!

.@MapQuest Makes Adding Maps to @Pinterest Easy aol.it/IaRGHI

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) April 9, 2012

The Advertising.com Group returned to ad:tech San Francisco, a major industry event attracting over 10,000 digital marketers from across the globe, to showcase their suite of advertiser and publisher solutions. Ad:tech was held at the Moscone Center West, where the Advertising.com booth was prominently displayed on the first floor exhibit hall. The booth featured product demo stations for Advertising.com, ADTECH, Pictela and AOL Video.

During the conference, we reinforced the message of being an end-to-end provider of premium digital marketing solutions for publishers, agencies and advertisers. Our booth was staffed by knowledgeable product and sales reps who engaged the ad:tech audience and the two-day event was packed with client meetings and product demos that generated leads for the group.

In addition to the booth, the Advertising.com Group hosted an exciting opening night party at the W hotel. The party was attended by top clients and partners who enjoyed food, drinks and music. You can check out photos from the party on our Facebook page.

Ran Harnevo of AOL Video was on also hand during ad:tech and led a panel discussion on video titled, "Integrated Video Planning". He was joined by expert panelist from Nielsen, FreeWheel and Revision3. During the sessions, the panelists explores key topics like:

• Discovering best practices to help control your video distribution
• Learning how creating complimentary content can help reach customers
• Better understanding today's video consumption habits to better target your audience.

To learn more about our advertiser and publisher solutions, visit Advertising.com.