April 2ndDoubleClick the Focus of War Over Control of Web Ads
Christopher Kenton
Google has entered the bidding war over DoubleClick, the Internet’s reigning broker of graphical advertising, Â elbowing Microsoft in the ribs and pushing the bidding war to a reported $2 Billion. That’s a lot more than Google paid for YouTube, but DoubleClick has actual revenue.
As many Wall Street analysts are pointing out, Microsoft can ill afford to lose the bid for Doubleclick–it’s their best remaining shot at keeping a strong position on the Web. If Google gains DoubleClick, they’ll add control of the largest flow of graphical advertising to their current position as king of text advertising. Microsoft’s only remaining play–since no one believes they can build a competitive advertising network with their own resources–would be Yahoo!, which would make $2B for DoubleClick look like an insane bargain.
Any way you slice it, a lot of money and energy is flowing into online advertising. That competition is leading to a lot more study and insight into the real impact of Web-based advertising on purchase behavior, and more advanced functionality for targetting effective ads. In fact, [tag]DoubleClick[/tag] has a decent knowledge center on its own site, with various research reports and white papers documenting the role of advertising in the purchase process. The research is certainly partisan, so read it all with a grain of salt. But there’s some worthwhile material for gaining a perspective on the current trends and spin shaping the online ad space.
Google has entered the bidding war over DoubleClick, the Internet’s reigning broker of graphical advertising, Â elbowing Microsoft in the ribs and pushing the bidding war to a reported $2 Billion. That’s a lot more than Google paid for YouTube, but DoubleClick has actual revenue.
As many Wall Street analysts are pointing out, Microsoft can ill afford to lose the bid for Doubleclick–it’s their best remaining shot at keeping a strong position on the Web. If Google gains DoubleClick, they’ll add control of the largest flow of graphical advertising to their current position as king of text advertising. Microsoft’s only remaining play–since no one believes they can build a competitive advertising network with their own resources–would be Yahoo!, which would make $2B for DoubleClick look like an insane bargain.
Any way you slice it, a lot of money and energy is flowing into online advertising. That competition is leading to a lot more study and insight into the real impact of Web-based advertising on purchase behavior, and more advanced functionality for targetting effective ads. In fact, [tag]DoubleClick[/tag] has a decent knowledge center on its own site, with various research reports and white papers documenting the role of advertising in the purchase process. The research is certainly partisan, so read it all with a grain of salt. But there’s some worthwhile material for gaining a perspective on the current trends and spin shaping the online ad space.