- Brandweek Staff

NEW YORK AOL said today it has signed a deal with Verizon Communications to become the official provider of advertising for the company's online and mobile Web properties.

Verizon said it would use AOL's Platform-A "sales force and its ad-serving, targeting and inventory management tools to power ads on its online inventory." Verizon currently uses Platform-A's mobile ad serving platform, Third Screen Media, to manage the sale of its mobile Web advertising. Terms of the deal were not released.

According to New York-based AOL, Platform-A "offers advertisers best-in-class solutions" to leverage such AOL consumer brands as Moviefone, MapQuest, TMZ, AOL.com and AIM.

The deal comes about a month after AOL named Lynda Clarizio president of Platform-A. Clarizio, who had been president at Advertising.com, one of the businesses that comprise Platform-A, replaced Curt Viebranz, who became Platform-A's first president when the organization was announced in the fall of 2007.

The agreement also comes amid Time Warner's ongoing talks to combine AOL with Yahoo! to rival Microsoft's estimated $42 billion offer to buy Yahoo!

"We felt that Platform-A's combination of advertising assets allowed us to take advantage of the industry's best publisher solutions to maintain this commitment, while providing the greatest overall value for our inventory," John Harrobin, svp, digital media and marketing at Verizon, New York, said in a statement. "We have been working with Platform-A's mobile ad serving platform, Third Screen Media, for more than a year now, and they have done a great job connecting large brand advertisers with our mobile network."