Online Advertising: One More by Microsoft

WSJ reports: “Microsoft announced plans to acquire Internet advertising company aQuantive in a deal valued at about $6 billion, or $66.50 a share, a significant premium. Founded in 1997, aQuantive is the parent company of Avenue A/Razorfish, Atlas Media Console and Drive PM.”

Techcrunch analyzes the deal with a transcript from the Microsoft announcement and Q&A.

My last post talked about other recent moves as well, including WPP group’s acquisition of 24/7 and an analysis of TimeWarner’s investment in Adify.

Clearly, the Online Advertising party is in full swing!

Consequently, the Content side of the business is also being impacted heavily, as newspapers and media companies tie up with partners who know a thing or two about online advertising. McClatchy’s deal with Yahoo is a good example.

I recently had an email chat with Tom Foremski who predicted that old media will not survive. I said, it will, and gave him the analogy of the dotcom era, when everyone predicted that all brick-n-mortar retailers would die. 10 years later, most of those retailers are alive and well.

Similarly, I believe, old media will be a huge beneficiary of the online advertising trend, as they learn to reinvent themselves. With Rupert Murdoch playing the role of the industry pioneer – alert and willing to learn, open to new ideas and experiments, and gutsy enough to make bold moves, the industry even has a torchbearer who shows the way.

Nonetheless, with this much discontinuity in the market, new businesses are being built and will continue to be, just as brands like Amazon and eBay came about in the dotcom era.

Old and new media will coexist, as the advertising infrastructure (digital text, display, audio, video) gets itself organized.

This segment is a part in the series : Online Advertising