Technics: Internet Web2.0: Google buys DoubleClick to continue lead in online advertizing

Read/WriteWeb email newsletter carries word of "Google to Acquire DoubleClick For $3.1 Billion In Cash." (Apr13,2k7)--also at R/WW website.

In a move predicted by R/WW's Sean Ammirati and 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.

Technotes, by Technowlb

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.

MarketWatch reporter Gabriel Madway takes up the optimatics aspect in monetary terms, "Google agrees to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion" (Apr13,2k7):

San Francisco (MarketWatch) -- Google Inc. (GOOG: GOOG466.29, -1.10, -0.2% ) said late Friday it has agreed to acquire digital marketing company DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion in cash from private equity firms Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity, and [Google] management. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. DoubleClick is based in New York. "It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful," said Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, in a statement. "Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers."

Hopefully, the new DoubleClick-able Google will allow both websites and blogs to have greater control over their ads when dealing with Google's system.

I interviewed rW's General Editor, Owlb, on our advertizing perspective. He said: "I have been very sad about the lack of editorial fit between Google Adsense ads that we run on various pages of refWrite. I'm definitely looking for something competitive in regard to the possiblity of our choosing--say, from an Adsense massive list--a menu of advertizing that wholely fits with our editorial policy and regular-readers as our best-market niche. Adsense has an alogarithm by which to choose and place ads here, but often that mechanically-applied numeric formula is so skewed in its determination of the editorial slant of what should be the best ad-content for us, that Google's search for profits here is so mis-structured it seems to reduce itself to absurdity. Let refWrite choose which ads to place, as part of our own overall editorial/advertizing identity. We remain non-commercial, but we would prefer that our own selection of adverts (at least give us a veto power!) be given the first chance to make a marginal profit off our existence." That's our General Editor, Owlb.

As to my own view, I tow the line but still enjoy the suprizes we encounter strait from the Google mathemical ad-machine.