More On AOL?s Disc Strategy: $1.19 Floppies, 50% Of All CDs Made, And Precision Bombing

Yesterday, our post about AOL's promotional discs by way of an excellent thread on Quora invoked quite a bit of feedback. That's hardly surprising given that every man, woman, and child (at least in the United States) probably had their hands on one of the discs at some point in the 1990s. In fact, Jan Brandt, AOL?s former Chief Marketing Officer, dropped a huge knowledge bomb in the Quora thread after we published our original post: "At one point, 50% of the CD?s produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it," she wrote. Wow. And she followed up today in a new thread with even more interesting information about the program. Specifically, someone asked:�What was the Conversion Rate of AOL CDs in the 1990's? Given how widespread the discs were, you might think AOL wasn't (or wasn't able to) monitor the rates so closely. But they were, according to Brandt. "The profitability of each and every disk and promotion effort was tracked and analyzed. We conducted approximately 2000 different tests each year and used these results to develop future programs. Despite the label 'carpet bombing,' there was actually a very high level of marketing sophistication and almost all decisions were data and results driven," she writes.

Ciara Rachel Hunter Heidi Montag Katharine McPhee T.A.T.u.