Ad Networks being bought

There has been a ton of consolidation with Ad networks in the last few months. Google bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, Yahoo! bought the rest of RightMedia for $680 million, WPP bought 24/7 Media for $649 million, and then Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6 billion in cash! Wow, who would have thought that these ad networks would become such hot properties. Obviously, Hellman & Friedman had the foresight to see this coming. I don't know anyone at that firm, but they made a great return taking DoubleClick private and then selling to Google (sidenote: Congratulations to David Rosenblatt who joined DoubleClick in 1997, went through all the ups and downs, including this last "up" with taking private and selling to Google - also, congrats to Charlie Dickson who joined DoubleClick about a month before they were acquired by Google - they say timing is everything!).

Which brings me to the point of this post. AOL, who seems to always be getting beaten on, started this trend by buying Advertising.com for $435 million in June of 2004! That must now be seen as a great deal driven by Jon Miller and Steve Swad over at AOL (they were the CEO and CFO at the time). In any regards, congrats to AOL for leading the way and seeing this trend before the rest of the market. Smart move, and Jon Miller deserves a lot more credit that he has gotten for his job at AOL!