Microsoft/DoubleClick Deal Seems Likely
Microsoft is reportedly one of the suitors for online advertising network DoubleClick. Many believe a deal is imminent.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that DoubleClick’s owner–Hellman & Friedman–is looking to cash out for roughly $2 billion–nearly twice what they paid for DoubleClick in 2005.
There are plenty of options for DoubleClick, and of course, it could go public again, but a Microsoft purchase could be beneficial for both parties especially given speculation that Google will soon announce a Double-Click-like service.
It will be interesting to see if Microsoft will pull the trigger on a deal this big. Given that Adcenter hasn’t gained much traction and is lagging behind both Google and Yahoo, the DC purchase could be the fastest and most efficient move to secure a place in the growing and lucrative online advertising market. It has to do something fairly quickly or be left behind.
Obviously Microsoft could move several different directions to change its situation –it could buy Yahoo (which has been rumored as well), but that would be a very expensive deal OR it could continue to pump money into its current online services to try and get some kind of traction organically. Given these scenarios, acquiring DoubleClick seems like a middle ground approach.
This post was written by: Kim Mickelsen
April 12th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Hi Kim,
After reading your post I thought you might find my take on the rumored deal interesting. Its the latest entry on my blog http://customersandcapital.com/
cheers,
~Vic