Microsoft paid 6 Billion dollars for aQuantive -- a 85% premium over aQuantive's closing price of $35.87 on May 19th. Is Microsoft desperate? Maybe not.
The cumulative of online US Ad Spend projection for 2007-09 from eMarketer totals $ 71.4 billion. Microsoft might have paid the right price if it finally gets its Internet act together because Google and Yahoo! cornered about 50% of US online Ad spending between 2004-07.
- aQuantive has 2600 employees and clocked $ 442 million in sales leaving $50 million in profit in 2006
- Online Ad spending has jumped from $ 6 billion to $ 16.4 billion since 2002 according to eMarketer.
- Display Ads grew from $3.4 billion between 2005 and 2006. aQuantive has a tool Atlas that would let advertisers plan and serve ads on MSN and on non-Microsoft sites.
Read The Seattle Times article by Kim Petereson to find out who pocketed most of the $ 6 billion.
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Tracked on: June 12, 2007 7:07 AM | Permalink to Trackback