Deals

Deals

by Joe Weisenthal


Print



Google And Microsoft In Battle For Onetime Advertising Darling

from the double-double dept

Last week, rumors emerged that Microsoft was in talks to buy DoubleClick, one of the pioneers of online advertising. Obviously, DoubleClick is nowhere near as preeminent as it was during the bubble, but the company still does a lot of business, making it attractive to Microsoft, which is desperate to jump start its middling online advertising business. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, Google is interested in the company, and has pushed the bidding to north of $2 billion. Google may have a couple of reasons for wanting DoubleClick. First of all, it might simply be a move to shut out Microsoft, and prevent its competitor from getting any momentum in the online advertising space. Google has already showed a willingness to engage in this of aggressive tactic, as part of its motivation for pursuing deals with MySpace and AOL was to prevent Microsoft from getting at them. Even its acquisition of YouTube was done in part to prevent a competitor from snagging it. The other reason the deal might make sense to Google is that it's long been trying to diversify away from the simple text ads that make it the bulk of its money. It's done experiments with other methods, but so far nothing has been particularly successful. DoubleClick, of course, is primarily known for delivering banner ads, which remain quite common. Because DoubleClick is currently under the ownership of a private equity firm, it's hard to say how the bidding stacks up against its actual revenue and earnings, but it's clear that the big inernet giants are willing to battle aggressively for any remaining bits of territory online.

10 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1. Competition in the Digital Media Marketplace by Kelly Goode on Apr 2nd, 2007 @ 10:27am

    Competition in this marketplace is good - more than good. But banner ads offer only a microcosm of the profit to be gained in the future of the Digital Media Marketplace.

    The key is going to be delivering content while simultaneosly delivering revenue to the content creator over and over. This is what YouTube is actually missing.

    I believe profoundly in the concepts offered by The 9thxchange. This company will lead in the digital media marketplace because of the key components.

    The 9thXchange marketplace is the newest way to bring together buyers and sellers of digital content. The service dramatically reduces content piracy by offering the seller lifetime royalties—even on exchanges between consumers. Moreover, the service accommodates all technology platforms, file types and creators. The 9thxchange and its CEO John Bonaccorso have been fully featured in Crains Detroit AGAIN.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Re: Competition in the Digital Media Marketplace by Pappa Joe on Apr 2nd, 2007 @ 10:45am

    Or they could have their employees reply to techdirt with not-so-thinly veiled attempts at advertising.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  3. Re: Re: Competition in the Digital Media Marketpla by Anonymous Coward on Apr 2nd, 2007 @ 10:56am

    There was a veil?

    There's nothng like astro-turfing to turn away prospective customers!

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  4. Re: Re: Re: Competition in the Digital Media Marke by Casper on Apr 2nd, 2007 @ 12:01pm

    Come on guys, your going to hurt his feelings... he spent a lot of time copying that from their pamphlet.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  5. by Joel Coehoorn on Apr 2nd, 2007 @ 12:24pm

    Google might just be wanting to drive up the price for Microsoft.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  6. by freak3dot on Apr 2nd, 2007 @ 12:39pm

    You go google! Drive up the price for M$.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  7. 9thxchange by Quantum John on Apr 2nd, 2007 @ 12:46pm

    9thxchange uses DRM, so they have probably doomed themselves.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  8. by Alex on Apr 2nd, 2007 @ 3:51pm

    Why do they call it "DoubleClick" when you don't doubleclick on anything on the web?

    Oh wait, I know, if you double click on an ad you get 2 impressions and more money.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  9. Re: by Michael on Apr 13th, 2007 @ 12:52pm

    If you double click on the ad, you get two clicks, not two impressions...Nice try though.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  10. doubleclick vs.overture by MPMsoft! on Jun 21st, 2007 @ 10:57am

    The main difference between overture (yahoo) and doubleclick is that doubleclick works and overture doesn't.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

Add Your Comment

Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie
  • Plain Text: A CRLF will be replaced by break <br> tag, all other allowable HTML is intact
  • HTML: No formatting of any kind is done without explicitly being written in
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <p> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
Close
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Plain Text HTML Save me a cookie
Search the Techdirt Blog
And now, a word from our Sponsors..
Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Related Stories
Close
E-mail It