Today’s announcement that Microsoft is paying about $6 billion to buy aQuantive is the latest ownership change of an advertising-related Internet company.
Yesterday WPP Group announced that it was buying 24/7 Real Media for $649 million. And earlier this week Silver Lake Partners and ValueAct Capital announced they were buying Acxiom for $2.25 billion and taking it private.
Three deals, $9 billion dollars of consideration, and another big shift in ownership and alignment of Internet advertising alliances. All sparked by Google’s $3 billion purchase of DoubleClick.
While old media continues to slow dance (think News Corp / Dow Jones and Thompson / Reuters), new media is turning into a mosh pit at an AC/DC concert.
Posted in: DealsCOMMENTS (3)
This stuff makes me nervous. Brad it was an 85% premium on the stock price... and feels like some of the deals that led to the 1.0 bubble. Call me paranoid, but let's hope the market continues down a path of sanity and these deals don't morph into Dotcom 2.0.
Congrats to the aQuantive team, for sure. :)
As a former Acxiom employee, I would imagine their deal has been in the works for awhile. Other than some acquired companies (including the startup I worked at) they were pretty flat and out of places to get new revenue without some sort of major sea change.
Actually the Acxiom bid seems below market value-- I wouldn't be surprised to see a competing bid from someone like Dunn & Bradstreet or maybe even someone like Experian.
I think you are underplaying the Thomson/Reuters merger. It may be slow, but I think there is more immediate value there than in the mosh pit junkies. Hell at $17 billion how fast can you be?
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