Tradedoubler to be acquired by AOL?
For the past one and half years, we have been expecting to see more such M&A news– most industry folks kind of knew that Linkshare’s acquisition by Rakuten was probably only the beginning. So, when news of TradeDoubler being acquired by AOL came out yesterday, it wasn’t totally unexpected. Yet, what did suprise me a bit is that the M&A seems to have happened the other way around; my feeling was that the European companies (Zanox & Tradedoubler were the main suspects) would try to acquire some of the US companies to expand their reach– particularly after the international forays these companies had made last year.
While the stated goal of the proposed acquisition is for AOL / Advertising.com to expand their European online advertising business, Advertising.com might want to bring Tradedoubler’s technology and advertiser network to the US.
Tradedoubler, which listed on the Stockholm Exchange last year, has made some rapid strides — its stock reportedly appreciated 15% on this news, even though the acquisition is not official/ approved. How the other ad networks in Europe react to this development will be interesting to watch— there’s bound to be some more interesting developments in this area pretty soon.
Even if there aren’t too many other M&As of this scale, we can certainly expect the other players to be put under much greater competitive pressures, which can always be deemed good for both advertisers and publishers (though their interests are not always in sync).
