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.
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  • identicon
    Kelly Goode, 2 Apr 2007 @ 10:27am

    Competition in the Digital Media Marketplace

    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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Pappa Joe, 2 Apr 2007 @ 10:45am

      Re: Competition in the Digital Media Marketplace

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

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2007 @ 10:56am

        Re: Re: Competition in the Digital Media Marketpla

        There was a veil?

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

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Casper, 2 Apr 2007 @ 12:01pm

          Re: Re: Re: Competition in the Digital Media Marke

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

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Joel Coehoorn, 2 Apr 2007 @ 12:24pm

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

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    freak3dot, 2 Apr 2007 @ 12:39pm

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

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Quantum John (profile), 2 Apr 2007 @ 12:46pm

    9thxchange

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

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Alex, 2 Apr 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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Michael, 13 Apr 2007 @ 12:52pm

      Re:

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

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    MPMsoft!, 21 Jun 2007 @ 10:57am

    doubleclick vs.overture

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

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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