AOL Slashes European Offices, Remains Bullish on AdTech

AOL is moving rapidly to close offices in Europe, in keeping with statements made by CEO Tim Armstrong last week.

Separate reports in The Guardian and Spiegel Online described the cuts. Four German offices will close, in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich. In the U.K., the company is also planning an unspecified but significant number of cuts. It's still weighing whether to close its France office, reportedly. AOL will reportedly dismiss many staff by Wednesday this week.

One bright spot in the carnage: Europe-based ad serving business AdTech has been spared the axe.

That's not surprising in light of recent comments made by Armstrong. Speaking last week at a Citi investment conference, he praised AdTech and listed it among AOL properties he says have been undervalued or "forgotten" after the Time Warner/AOL merger. Others on that list include Moviefone, MapQuest, and media platform Winamp.

Armstrong noted AdTech recently had a record day for serving ads in Europe, and he said the company represented one area where AOL was competitive with Google and Microsoft -- which both operate in-house ad serving platforms.