Is DoubleClick a profit margin killer for Google?

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Maybe at first

Yahoo is still the king when it comes to display advertising currently, but Google's AdSense network (which only rarely gets fully-utilized by advertisers for banner/flash ads instead of less-effective text ads) is already one of the largest players in this space. And its cost-effective nature makes it particularly attractive from an advertiser's perspective whenever budgets tighten.

I'm wondering if somehow this isn't really just another data mining (instead of revenue) buy like Feedburner when you boil it down to its core components. People still think of DoubleClick as a banner network, but it got out of that game several years ago (Google AdSense is a more pure form of banner network than DoubleClick is.) Instead a big chunk of DoubleClick's revenues came from their highly popular ad hosting and delivery platforms. And with that you get a ton of data, even on sites you don't host or have analytics data on.

I wouldn't be at all surprised (in fact I pretty much expect) Google will absorb tools like DoubleClick's bellcow DART and turn around and give them away to advertisers for free in order to quickly gain dominant marketshare. They've done it numerous times in the past so it's not exactly a stretch to see them doing it again here.

Microsoft will be forced to do the same thing with Aquantive's Atlas (which IMO is actually a nicer ad platform than DART.)

Posted by: Glados   Posted on: 03/25/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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