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Online Advertising Acquisition Frenzy
By Stock Charts | May 21, 2007
With all the recent mergers and acquisitions in the online advertising arena, there is no denying that this area is red hot. Here are some of the recent acquisitions by the big players:
(thanks to Zac over at ZacJohnson.com for the graphic)
The party was started by Google (GOOG) when they announced the DoubleClick in April for a staggering $3.1 billion. Some have speculated that this acquisition was fueled by a desire to expand into other mediums of internet advertising, including video, banner, and other graphical ads. Yahoo (YHOO) quickly followed suit by buying the rest of Right Media, a advertising company in which they already had a partial stake. Not to be outdone, WPP Group snapped up 24/7 Real Media for $649 million, and Microsoft (MSFT) paid a hefty $6 billion for aQuantive (AQNT). Shares of aQuantive shot up $27.78, or about 77 percent, to $63.65 immediately following the announcement. This leaves only a few large internet advertising firms on the market, including ValueClick, Gorilla Nation, and Tribal Fusion.
Of these three, ValueClick (VCLK) is the only publicly traded company. Shares of ValueClick increased by 9% following Microsoft’s announcement. It looks as though the big boys are gearing up for war; it should be interesting to see who emerges victorious in a battlefield dominated by Google for the past 2 years.
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Topics: Commentary |
May 21st, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Great coverage man. It looks as though ValueCick may be the next prime target, but we’ll just have to see. Once again though, Google has made the best acquisition of the four companies.
-Sam from MarketMatador.com