Join us Sept. 14-16 in Miami to connect with top publishing leaders
In 1967, Kathrine Switzer did something quite remarkable. She became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, even dodging the attempt of a race organizer to stop her. Switzer’s tale is one of several AOL is telling in a new video series that will highlight the achievements of women — and AOL’s emphasis on creating original digital content
The series, “Makers: Women Who Make America” features more than 100 interviews with the influential, inspirational and powerful women who have shaped our nation over the past half century. It is designed to be a model of documentary storytelling: thousands of interview clips, edited and unedited, will live a site to be mashed up into a three-hour film. PBS, for its part, will provide both broadcast and digital platforms to distribute the content, including its classroom digital network.
AOL developed Makers.com to house the videos and will distribute the videos across all AOL properties from The Huffington Post to Patch. Tim Armstrong, AOL’s CEO, said at a launch event that the effort is another example of AOL’s commitment to content, which it hopes will differentiate itself in the digital media world.
AOL is undoubtedly eyeing the growing video ad market. “Makers” has a sponsor, skin care brand Simple. The effort follows AOL’s announcement of an ambitious live streaming video network for The Huffington Post, which will launch in the summer.
More in Media
Media Briefing: Ads for AI agents have a measurement problem
A wave of startups is racing to solve AI ad measurement and attribution as publishers and advertisers experiment with serving ads to agents.
The winners and losers of YouTube’s view count and monetization overhaul
YouTube is changing how it measure views and raising the bar for creators to get monetized. Who wins and who loses?
As AI automates everything, The Atlantic is building games by hand
The Atlantic is bucking the AI automation trend with a new trivia game handcrafted by “Jeopardy!” champion and senior editor Drew Goins.