fatinfo.com

Media display all of a sudden has new life after the recent consolidation events of online ad space involving Yahoo, Google and Microsoft respectively.

The latest news involve the recent purchase of aQuantive by Microsoft for six billion dollars. That’s a whole lot of zeros in an effort to catch up to the mega ad deals by its online competitors.

What Microsoft gets in the deal:

• Entry into ad display targeting broadband users which has been growing at a rapid pace.
• Access to advertising agency clients of Avenue A | Razorfish.
• Atlas tool similar to Google Analytics / Urchin functionalities of tagging site traffic and conversions.
• Becomes the middleman between publishers and advertisers with current aQuantive tools.
• Rich media ad servers, strategically positions with top online publishers with lots of ad inventory space.
• A chance to drop a few pennies of their current market cap, and chance to write off a purchase as an expense. (Not that Microsoft pays a lot of taxes to begin with.)

24 hours earlier before the aQuantive acquisition deal, WPP (British Holding / Advertising firm) acquired 24/7 Real Media (which Microsoft was also reported to had been eying) for six hundred forty nine million dollars. 24/7 is responsible for selling ad space on publisher brands like USAToday.com, Forbes.com and over nine hundred other brands.

Publicis Groupe (French firm / owner of Saatchi & Saatchi) announced a bid for Digitas at one billion and three hundred million dollars.

AOL buys Adtech AG (German firm), an ad management firm. A move by AOL to end relationships with DoubleClick as a result of it being purchased by Google. AdTech competes in the same online space as DoubleClick; and will likely roll into AOL’s Advertising.com’s operations.

A few weeks earlier, Yahoo bought the remaining shares of privately held RightMedia.com for six hundred eighty million dollars which is an open exchange network where advertisers can pay the right amount of money for the right type of users; where publishers can place their ad inventory and get bids from advertisers and ad networks; and where the ad networks can efficiently meet the needs of clients while netting a good margin.

A whole month earlier, DoubleClick announced setting up an exchange for buying and selling rich media ads. This in turn bumped their market value from one billion to two billion, before finally being acquired by Google at a little over three billion dollars.

What can we conclude?

• The area of media display planning and buying is due for a full revival where the advent of new technology makes ad placement, and ad display metrics easier for advertisers to see and understand where their money down to the last cent is being spent.
• New companies are bound to see this as an opportunity to enter media display market while so much buzz is being generated by these billion dollar deals.
• Money will flow from traditional media, ie television ad spend to internet publisher because of the better metrics on impression cost, and interactivity of the rich media ads that engage users.
• Online advertising will continue to grow, as offline agencies realize a need for online ad technology to win new business and clients.

Are there any companies remaining to compete with all these heavy hitters?

• Only time will tell how these online media company acquisitions play out.
• New firm Traffiq joins the traffic exchange market with a beta countdown slated for release in two months. Platform promises to connect buyers and sellers of media display traffic in the open market similar to today’s equity markets.
• Firm Adsdaq goes by the tagline as the “true online exchange offering control for publishers and advertisers.”
• AdECN gets its name from Island ECN (equity market, Datek trading days).