August 13, 2007 | Monday

Microsoft Completes Acquisition of aQuantive

By Jon Myers, Director Of Search in News |Online Sales |Search Engines |Microsoft

The deal has finally gone through today that sees Microsoft acquire aQuantive as well as creating a new Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) Group to fit it in.

This is a big step for Microsoft and is the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history, valued at roughly $6 billion. The APS team will have responsibility for building and marketing all ad platforms, including Atlas and Microsoft AdCenter.

The official line from the press release is “This new business group will be responsible for building Microsoft’s monetization engine to serve the advertiser and publisher community.”

This hints at a much bigger option to integrate online media together when you see Atlas and AdCenter within the same group as well as reference to the advertiser and publisher community. APS will house other potential online media areas for development such as in-game and mobile ads which are two big up and coming areas.

The bigger conversation I am sure will fall around the agency arm Avenue A | Razorfish. As like at the time the potential Google Doubleclick deal came to light the main talk was about Google owning an agency such as Performics as part of the deal. Will it be the same here with Microsoft and Avenue A | Razorfish?

The APS group will be run by Brian McAndrews, CEO of aQuantive will sit within the Platforms & Services Division (PSD) run by Kevin Johnson. Within this group there is already The Online Services Group, led by Steve Berkowitz and The Search & Advertising Platform Group, led by Satya Nadella. Having all of these functions together under the one umbrella will make from a great opportunity to drive development into the online space for Microsoft.