May 21, 2007 | Monday

Microsoft acquires ad firm Aquantive

By Jackie Danicki - Blogger  in Marketing |News |Search Engines |Microsoft

...and they paid a pretty penny or two to do so, to the tune of $6 billion.

After Google bought DoubleClick, Aquantive’s value skyrocketed in response. The firm also recently posted stellar Q1 results (revenue of $142.6 million, with full year projections of $595 million to $615 million, defying the already rosy expectations of analysts). In the end, Microsoft had to pay a 80 per cent premium to seal this deal...which, let’s face it, they can well afford to do. This is their largest acquisition ever, and it will be interesting - to put it mildly - to see if the diversifying software monolith gets the return on investment they need out of this purchase.

This deal begs another question: Who’s going to buy Valueclick? As Joe Weisenthal comments, there may be no one left to buy them, apart from a traditional ad firm looking to sex up its offering with online.

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