Aol, the Web publisher that owns the Huffington Post and TechCrunch, climbed the most in three months in New York trading after posting its first sales gain in eight years.
Fourth-quarter sales rose 3.9 percent from a year earlier, to $599.5 million. Analysts had estimated that revenue would drop to $566.7 million in the period. The surprise growth came largely from AOL’s third-party ad sales business, which helps other Web publishers sell ad space through automated systems, a process called programmatic buying.
“The future of advertising is going to be more machine-to-machine trading,” CEO Tim Armstrong said, referring to the rise in trading desks used to buy and sell digital ad inventory. “There will also be growth in the human side of buying as well.”
The shares rose 7.4 percent, to $33.72, at the close in New York yesterday, the biggest one-day increase since November. AOL’s stock has surged 86 percent in the past 12 months.
The uptick in revenue marks a turning point for Armstrong, who has worked to transform the company into an ad-based content publisher rather than a dial-up Internet service provider.