Over the last few days I’ve read a lot of blog posts, articles, and comments about the Google acquisition of Doubleclick for $3.1 billion. Obviously it’s a large deal that has a lot of ramifications for the advertising and media space, so there was plenty to read.
Even with so much to read, I found that people were all over the map on why they thought the deal was done, or what it means for all the parties involved. It’s amazing how many different perspectives you can find on one business deal.
The post I found the most accurate to me was this post from Got Ads?. And no, it wasn’t because he mentioned Right Media in a positive way. I found a couple of key points here that were rarely seen anywhere else:
1. Yahoo repping Microsoft inventory – It sounds crazy, but Got Ads? is right that Microsoft hasn’t done as well in advertising as everyone has hoped, and they desperately want to. Acquiring Yahoo! would be a large task with a large price tag with a lot of potential to go wrong. While it doesn’t sound that likely, it seems like a smart move for both Microsoft and Yahoo if Yahoo took over the selling and management of Microsoft’s search and display inventory.
2. Doubleclick’s Advertising Exchange – It was pretty big news when Doubleclick announced their upcoming “ad exchange” before the acquisition was announced, but not much was said about it after the deal came out. It’s a key ingredient for what Google’s after, and Doubleclick themselves said it’s going to be a major driver of revenue over the nextg few years. Got Ads? does comment that it differs from the Right Media Exchange because they handle payment. Although, from everything I’ve seen and heard it sounds less like an exchange and more like an ad network. Ad networks have always handled payment. If Doucleclick is just connecting advertisers to publishers, taking a big cut, and handling all payment, isn’t that just an ad network? A business they left years ago? Guaranteeing payment is great and all, but you can bet that it requires Doubleclick will require more of an ad network-sized cut of the revenue opposed to an smaller “exchange” piece of revenue.
It will continue to be interesting to see how this acquisition plays out over the next couple of years.