At a time when Google and Facebook are steadily building out their ad tech stacks and dominating the online advertising landscape, AOL believes it will soon become a credible No. 3.

That was the claim made by Tim Armstrong, AOL chairman and CEO, speaking Friday during his company's first-quarter earnings call.

It's a bold statement, not least because AOL has a long way to go. EMarketer has it ranked 11th in terms of global digital ad share, with just 0.71% of the market to Facebook's 9.07% and Google's 31.07% (see table below).

But fresh from announcing a 7.2% lift in revenue, thanks to strong ad sales, Armstrong is determined the company will get there. And he gave two big reasons he thinks it's possible.

Advertisers want a one-stop shop for their digital advertising — and AOL has just built a new platform to help provide that

View photos emarketer digital ad market share More

In April, AOL rebranded all its different ad tech platforms — including Adap.tv, AdLearn, and Convertro — under a new digital dashboard called One by AOL.

The idea was to create an open platform, where advertisers can plug in lots of different components of their spend — across AOL's platforms, rival digital competitors, and even TV — and view it all in one place.

Armstrong said on the call that marketers were moving in this direction. They want to consolidate the number of vendors they work with when it comes to their digital advertising. He said "unsophisticated customers" had about "15 point solutions" whereas the more sophisticated customers were on a "migration path" to five or so systems.

"We're building toward being one of the top three in this area," Armstrong said (Nos. 1 and 2 being Google and Facebook.)

Armstrong thinks AOL can differentiate itself from Google and Facebook by offering an "open" platform, where marketers can plug in their own components, even from rival firms. Armstrong used the metaphor of computer network servers: "You don't buy big-box servers anymore, where you have to throw the whole server out — you can replace the different parts. Ad tech systems work that way."

AOL doesn't just do the ad tech. It also makes the content advertisers want

Another way in which AOL (along with others, such as Yahoo) stands out from Facebook and Google is that it produces its own original content.

AOL has the scale of The Huffington Post, which it says reaches 200 million monthly unique users; other popular news sites including TechCrunch and Engadget; and video programming such as "Park Bench" with Steve Buscemi and "Making A Scene" with James Franco. AOL says its top shows reach 10 million to 15 million viewers, which isn't bad considering its video offering is still new to the market.

Armstrong describes this as its "barbell" strategy: "Premium" content, plus ad tech, which is very different from the pure ad tech players it is fighting to take advertising share from. And it plans to invest about $25 million in video content over the coming year, according to CFO Karen Dykstra, who was also speaking on the first-quarter earnings call.

Video is a smart road to go down. Marketers can't get enough of it. It is the fastest-growing advertising sector in the US, according to McKinsey & Company.

View photos video growth More

AOL knows it can't take on the scale of Facebook and YouTube in this area (at least not yet), but it hopes its two-pronged strategy can at least see it give the rest of the digital advertising sector a run for its money. And judging by AOL's Q1 results on Friday, there are already some signs of a revenue payoff.

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