Redmond (WA) – Following Google’s purchase of DoubleClick and several acquisitions of online advertising firms by AOL this week, Microsoft today announced that it will buy Aquantive for $6 billion, which represents an 85% premium over the firm’s market cap at market close on Thursday.

The feeding frenzy around online advertising firms continues. The purchase of Aquantive will add a number of national and international ad and marketing agencies, including Avenue A Razorfish, DNA, Amnesia, Neue Digitale, e-Crusade and Duke and Atlas, to Microsoft’s online advertising strategy. Microsoft plans to use the market reach and technologies offered by Aquantive to broaden its presence in the online advertising space beyond MSN, Xbox Live, Windows Live and Office Live.

Microsoft said that it will pay $66.50 for each Aquantive share in cash, resulting in a purchase price of about $6 billion. The purchase price represents an 85% premium for Aquantive’s stock, which closed at $35.87 on Thursday. Investors reacted quickly to the news and sent Aquantive’s stock up more than 77% to about $64 in late morning trading today.

Last month, Google acquired online advertising firm DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Microsoft reportedly had entered into a bidding war with Google over the firm, with a rumored targeted purchase price of around $2 billion. With Google winning the race, Microsoft reacted upset and stated that Google’s DoubleClick acquisition raises “serious” concerns about competition and security. Today’s move helps Microsoft to keep up, but the company had to reach deep into its warchest to purchase Aquantive.

AOL’s recent moves in the online advertising space slipped by somewhat unnoticed among those multi-billion dollar acquisitions. The company announced earlier this week that it has signed agreements to buy Third Screen Media, a mobile advertising network and mobile ad-serving and management platform provider. AOL also acquired Germany’s Adtech, which runs an ad-serving platform that includes an array of ad management and delivery applications enabling website publishers to manage traffic and report on their online advertising campaigns.

Wow thats alot of dough to just be throwing around....

May 18, 2007 10:34     

Wow thats alot of dough to just be throwing around... but i guess if your M$ you can do that.
IT worker report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Spend it to improve Windows?

May 18, 2007 12:47     

It would have been nice if MS spent it to improve Windows and not just on advertising. Perhaps make a version of Windows that isn't such a memory or hardware hog/not bloated.
BigWarpGuy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Paid for by 40 million Vista's

May 18, 2007 13:38     

And the one Zune they sold! Why is it that M$ charges the US so much for software, but gives it away to the rest of the world? Its the rest of the world that does the most piracy and MS gives them the biggest break and screws us. We need more Linux.
Mr T. report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

More of anything non-Win

May 18, 2007 15:16     

I think we need more of anything that is non-Win eComStation http://www.ecomstation.com ReactOS http://www.reactos.org FreeDOS http://www.freedos.org Linux http://www.linux.com etc. :)
BigWarpGuy report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0