The Grinch Who Stole Q1
Tech Crunch has been making the rounds and the projections for Q1 2009 online advertising are bleak: continue reading...
The following is a perpetual-work-in-progress. Once you start to compile a list of mergers and acquisitions, you realize why it’s nearly impossible to have a complete list. We are quite confident that the following is a very good, comprehensive list of the largest, more notable deals… but it is not - and no list will be - fully complete because there are too many countries around the world and too many industries to report (it is highly possible that the Wall Street Journal or Financial Post, for example, has such a list… but it would be thick and unwieldy).
We have included: continue reading...
Editor’s note: I knew we were speaking too soon. One more deal to add to the list: Time Warner to buy Quigo. Added to the bottom of the list, under ad networks.
According to The Jordan Edmiston Group Inc.’s October 2007 Client Briefing report, the number of deals through the first three quarters of 2007 exceeded full year 2006 figures: 637 transactions with $95B in value thus far. Do the math and that is $150M per deal, quite rich. continue reading...
I’ve been extremely harsh on Yahoo! As a shareholder, I sometimes wonder what I was thinking when I did not sell my holdings and short the stock when the last merger rumor with MSFT sent the stock soaring to $33 (valuing the company as a whole at over $40B, whereas it’s now back to $30B).
Today Yahoo! bought one of the favorite online ad networks: Blue Lithium. I could get all technical and outline all of the wonderful things that Blue Lithium does well, but the simple way to put it is Blue Lithium has some interesting click-stream targeting capabilities and its inventory of advertisers doesn’t suck ass. I wish there was a kinder, nicer way to put it, but while many ad networks make oodles of money running “Press the Fart Button” ads and “Punch the monkey” banners, Blue Lithium has built up a business - today valued at $300M by Yahoo! - by connecting audiences with marquee advertisers. continue reading...
It’s time to call time out, folks, and call a penalty on the play. Someone’s got to.
Yesterday, MySpace issued a report pushing social networking’s benefits to advertisers. It was, as Rafat Ali of Paid Content stated, “a study about MySpace, touting MySpace as an AdSpace…so take it with a grain of salt.” The findings were interesting, no doubt, but seeing MySpace push its agenda in conjunction with Isobar and Carat USA is somewhat eyebrow-raising. MySpace is a great company, and advertisers can yield a lot of benefit by working with it, but come on, today mainstream and new media sources are running with this story without questioning the evident bias in the study of, hmm… 3,000 US Internet Users. continue reading...
When you span the ad network landscape, something about Blue Lithium stands out. Their CEO Gurbaksh Chahal publicly (and rightfully) denigrated Google’s lack of traction in display advertising. But beneath the bravado is a bevy of things that make analysts excited about the company’s prospects as things heat up in online advertising once again. When Doubleclick hints at filing to go public once again, or selling out to MSFT, Google or AOL, naturally many look at publicly traded ad networks like Valueclick and 24/7 Realmedia as likely takeover candidates, but a few also keep tabs on Tribal Fusion and Blue Lithium, two of the largest privately held ad networks.
Of the two companies, each has taken an interesting approach to maximize their potential. In the case of Blue Lithium, I have always been impressed with their progressive and proactive approach to trying out new things. A few years ago, one of my contacts there reached out to me to help them promote a new online education web property. It was interesting to see a network diving into the world of publishing, but it was a natural one, particularly for Blue Lithium, who studies click streams to better understand the intention of users on the Web. continue reading...
