AOL’s gargantuan Platform-A (NYSE: TWX) advertising outfit, which recently set up camp in the UK, today opens in France. Philippe Besnard, who was south Europe MD for AOL’s Advertising.com acquisition, becomes MD, while AOL’s French MD Frédéric Daruty becomes his deputy. The step is essentially an integration of ad net Advertising.com’s Paris office and AOL Publicité, AOL’s French existing ad agency that markets its own sites as well as a network of 42 third parties. AOL says the combined entity will have an audience of nearly 28 million monthly uniques. But this is far from a complete integration of all of Platform-A’s constituents, the result of AOL’s 18-month advertising acquisition binge: ad server AdTech, behavioural target Tacoda, affiliate platform Buy.at, mobile outfit Third Screen Media and contextual searcher Quigo will be added later, “progressively”.