In a move predicted by R/WW’s Sean Ammirati and The New York Times a week or so ago, one of the big Internet companies has acquired online advertising system DoubleClick. And the buyer is none other than Web 2.0’s big spender, Google! According to the press release just out:
“The acquisition will combine DoubleClick’s expertise in ad management technology for media buyers and sellers with Google’s leading advertising platform and publisher monetization services.
The combination of Google and DoubleClick will offer superior tools for targeting, serving and analyzing online ads of all types, significantly benefiting customers and consumers…”
This is a huge deal – because for DoubleClick, Google is paying nearly twice the amount it paid for YouTube late last year ($1.65B in that case).
The deal appears to have been hastened by DoubleClick’s announcement earlier this month that it plans to launch an exchange for online advertisements. Sean analyzed this development on 4 April, noting that it may lead to more profitable monetization of online ads. As if Google isn’t profitable enough already in that department! One thing’s for sure, this is a blow to Microsoft – whose AdCenter product was designed as a direct competitor to Google’s Adsense/AdWords. But now Google has – yet again – trumped the competition (Microsoft and Yahoo) by taking its online advertising technology into new territory.
