Microsoft to Buy DoubleClick?

roscoetoon writes to tell us Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft is in talks to buy DoubleClick. Seen as a move to compete against the Google advertising engine Double Click owners Hellman & Friedman are seeking a $2 billion payday. "The purchase would give Microsoft tools to battle Google Inc. for ads that appear on Web sites. DoubleClick works with advertisers to create online campaigns, such as streaming video clips to promote New Line Cinema's movie "The Number 23." The New York-based company's Dart technology monitors the performance of Internet ads for marketing companies."

Comments

Perfect match

[Spazmania]

The company that does bloated and hated software buys the company that does bloated and hated internet ads. Its a perfect match.

MS should know when to give up

[EmbeddedJanitor]

MS have a very poor history of taking away market share from others, especially on a playing field that is stacked against them.

Their roaring success: DOS + Windows was not achieved by taking away market share from others (ie. Apple etc), but by going into a new market. They used illegal means to get Office in place.

Whenever they have tried to eat into an existing market where they cannot leverage Windows they have failed miserably: Zune, MSN, .... Their aquisitions are much the same: hotmail...

Doubleclick is likely to end up on the junk pile too.

Just what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boy, the Zune of internet advertising. I'm sure the Google people are really worried.

Just so long...

[tverbeek]

Just so long as they don't patent the double-click.

Seriously, who doesn't filter DoubleClick?

[KingSkippus]

If you use Firefox, snag Adblock Plus and the Filterset.G Updater. If you're using Internet Destr-- Er, I mean Internet Explorer, woe is you, but at least snag the Google Toolbar, which I think blocks DoubleClick ads.

Re:Seriously, who doesn't filter DoubleClick?

[Doctor Memory]

snag the Google Toolbar, which I think blocks DoubleClick ads If it doesn't now, it will after the acquisition!

Re:Seriously, who doesn't filter DoubleClick?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, I finally get to tell my awesome Doubleclick story.

To back up all the way to the beginning, a couple of years ago, I got a call from a recruiter about a job with a small local company that was writing some software that would allow people to track advertising campaigns. I interviewed, and felt rather ambivalent about them... they seemed like they were writing decent software, but I'm over the whole startup thing, and spending 80 hours in the office. They passed on me. At the time I was a little upset, even though I wasn't all that interested in them. As my neighbor put it, "It's like when the ugly girl doesn't want to dance with you."

A while later, I saw some of the guys who interviewed me walking around the building I worked in. I checked the building directory, but the company wasn't on the list. So I hit their website, and lo and behold, they'd been bought by Doubleclick.

Whew. Dodged a bullet. I mean, Doubleclick. Yikes. I'm past the point in my life where I can walk out of a job on principle without another job already lined up, and I'm still paranoid from the bust.

So I tell the recruiter all this, and I don't really mince words about my opinion concerning Doubleclick.

He submitted me anyway.

I got a call a couple days later from someone. It was outside normal business hours, and I normally don't answer numbers I don't recognize during my off time, but a good friend of mine was expecting the birth of his son any day, so I answered just in case. I was in a guitar shop at the time, and couldn't hear too well, but they were talking about the opportunity at Doubleclick. I assumed it was another recruiter, so I went into my whole spiel about my history with the other company, how glad I wasn't working for them when they were acquired, and how distasteful I found Doubleclick.

I guess there's really no suspense here. Naturally, the guy I was talking to was the hiring manager over at Doubleclick, and I had just unloaded on him. In fact, I do believe I mentioned being "glad I don't have that stain on my resume."

I felt pretty horrible. It was an accident, and I'm sure the poor guy didn't want to work at Doubleclick any more than I did. But still... in retrospect, it was pretty funny.

Even funnier was the fact that Doubleclick had an office in our building. When I told a coworker the story the following day, she pointed out that, undoubtedly, someone on the second floor was telling the exact same story :)

Re:Seriously, who doesn't filter DoubleClick?

[gertam]

Have you thought about the fact that Microsoft doesn't just get access to the doubleclick domains, but doubleclick gets access to the microsoft domains. You gonna block all them, go ahead. Not many companies will.

Where did you go yesterday?

[HTH NE1]

Doubleclick is likely to end up on the junk pile too.

Looks to me like Microsoft has just decided to stop asking, "Where do you want to go today?" and decided to buy the company that has already harvested the answer. They now have access to a huge database of cross-site cookies tracking where people have gone on the web.

Re:Micosoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's correct. My company (named after me, Mico) is in talks to buy DoubleClick.

Nonsense

[mccalli]

Windows wasn't a foregone conclusion - in the early days there was GEM, and during Windows' development there was also OS/2. Office didn't just materialise either, there was Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect/WordStar/DBase III. Then there's Netscape - they killed Netscape-the-company completely by, despite the many myths, simply being better than Netscape v4.

Tried to eat into an existing market with Hotmail? Hotmail was the market - it's all the others that are the followers here. Some did it better of course, but MS were not trying to take away market share from others. They were trying to prevent losing users to web-based interfaces which they did not own.

Zune and MSN...yep, agreed. Doubleclick - different class. It's not an end-user product, and due to this I rather suspect they'll do well with it. MS do cater to developers and API users pretty well, and that's what you're talking about when it comes to an advert site. In the end it can only be good to have two vast firms competing for your site's space and offering you cash accordingly.

Well, good for the site creator of course. For me, I mutter a few words of gratitude for AdBlock and Pithhelmet and then carry on regardless.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Just one more reason for people to hate MS

[daeg]

Which makes them a perfect advertiser in my books. They are easy to block. Their ad spaces on client websites generally collapse very neatly, too.

That said, I wonder what Microsoft could bring to DoubleClick. I'd hate to see Microsoft add various "stealth" techniques that other advertisers use, e.g., frequently rotating hostnames, formats, etc.

If customers are going to block your ads, at least make it easy. They're going to do it either way. The easier you make it, the more those people will remain on those websites, which at least brings you minimal value as an advertiser. When I worked in media, we typically gave clients two different sets of stats for this exact purpose. You don't disclose your traffic count based on your advertising banners/etc, instead you tell them your server stats traffic, which is always higher. Of course, you're selling impressions/clicks/referrals, so the advertiser doesn't actually care if the site users are blocking their ad as long as they get what they paid for. The website, of course, may or may not care, depending on who they are.

Re:Micosoft?

[313373_bot]

No, Mycosoft is better: from the greek mycos, for fungus, and soft, for software. Virus infections, DRM infections and now ad infections? It surely resembles a nasty case of mycosis.

Re:Valuations

[grub]

Youtube = 1.6 billion DoubleClick = 2? Your thoughts?

My copies of AdBlock don't block YouTube.

Wrong Half, M$

[AnonymousRobin]

Nobody goes to Google Whatever for the ads. They go there because they want to use a useful, well-made service. You don't compete by making better ads. Nobody likes ads. Google gets away with it because their ads are unobtrusive, and nobody minds seeing (occasionally useful) ads on the side of their Gmail inbox. People are going to mind seeing giant streaming videos playing at full volume when they're trying to read an e-mail from their niece. If Microsoft wants to compete, they're going to have to spend a little less time trying to think about how to steal money from you by annoying you enough, and a bit more on making applications good enough that people won't mind ads.

This is good!

[Groo Wanderer]

You guys don't get it. Hopefully MS will buy doubleclick and make them THE source for all MS based adds. Instead of the boring old flash, or worse yet, non-interactive dull jpegs, you can now get ads enhanced with all sorts of advanced features. Instead of plain old JPEGs, you can see the glory of the new MS format. You can protect your video ads so they will only play in WiMP11 with DRM user enhancements. Flash? Yestertech, MS has their newer better version.

This will be absolute nirvana! Why? Because they sure as hell won't put out those bullshit DRM infected formats for linux, and I will never have to see their ads again. I won't even have to install a plugin to avoid them. Oh happy day.

          -Charlie