What is next for Microsoft: a Quantive and yet to be purchased ValueClick

When Microsoft purchased online ad firm aQuantive, it represented the third of the internet's biggest players acquiring a well-trafficked online advertising firm. Since Google's purchase of DoubleClick and Yahoo's acquisition of Right Media, expert financial bloggers have been speculating that the industry is ripe for acquisition.

Expert financial bloggers, Barron's Online , titled their most recent post “ValuClick-the next online ad firm to get acquired.” In this well-researched and poignant post, Barron's Online quoted thinkEquity's Stewart Barry as saying ValueClick “should be next” in the Internet advertising industry's rush towards consolidation. While Barron's Online claims that an FTC investigation into the company's lead generation practices is not expected to find evidence of wrong-doing, certain industry analysts have downgraded the stock out of fears of a potential “tug of war between bears concerned by the FTC investigation and bulls focused on takeover possibilities.”

Well-respected finance-industry blog! GIGA OM sees Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive as a sign of desperation. In a recent post, titled “Did Microsoft Go Lose It's Head Over aQuantive?” GIGA OM commented that they thought the acquisition was proof that Microsoft had gone “screwy” and emphasized that fact by declaring “Just as Microsoft was obsessed 10 years ago with an iron grip on the computer desktop - a vision that proved almost fatally shortsighted - it’s now obsessed with having a Bigfoot-sized imprint in the online-advertising industry.” The post's author, Kevin Kelleher, agrees that aQuantive is a decent acquisition, b ut he remains unconvinced that Microsoft got value for money in the deal. “aQuantive is a respectable enough, if already overpriced, company. But its value has been erratic. Before the whole media-merger mania caught fire, aQuantive went from $11 two years ago to $29 in early 2005, down to $19 that same summer, and back up to $29 a few months on.”

Paul Kederovsky's Infectuous Greed Blog's recent post titled “How Microsoft Justified the aQuantive Buy” he includes a very incisive quote from Joe Doran, speculating that Microsoft could have something up its sleeve. “ We see a $600 billion total adverti! sing mar ket and when we think about convergence of IP-based media consumption and where that's going we see a tremendous ability for us to build the next generation ad platform.”

Could Microsoft's purchase of aQuantive signify the first steps in the next evolution of the online advertising industry? Stay tuned to Inveslogic's elite corps of business bloggers for all the facts and opinion.

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