Online Advertising Rollup

The $40 billion global digital advertising market is growing and is in need of services and content. This is good news for those of us who provide the skills, imagination and talent to new media enterprises. We have some very busy times ahead as the battle for eyeballs begins and is waged on the TV screen, computer and mobile phone.

Last month Microsoft purchased one of my neighbors, aQuantive, for $6 Billion. They’ve come a long way from being AvenueA who placed banner ads on my previous company's site MountainZone.com back in the dot com days. What we in the web services industry are watching for is what Microsoft does with the agency side of the business. Can they really support a web shop that builds sites for its competitors? Can they re-focus the team to build internal projects?

WPP, one of the world’s largest communications companies, recently bought 24/7 Real Media for $650 million. WPP owns JWT and the Grey Global Group and is well positioned for this worldwide shift to online advertising.

Back in April, Yahoo! purchased the advertising network RightMedia for over $700 million. It actually bought 20% of the company last year and with all the activity in this space, they finally bought the rest of the pie.

And then there’s Google, always a formidable competitor, who stepped up their efforts in April with a purchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Combine that with the acquisition of YouTube and you’ve got yourself a full-meal media empire.

International marketing company Publicis bought Boston-based Digitas for $1.3 billion and then Digitas turned around and bought a French web agency, Business Interactif, for $182 million. Their advertising and marketing clients apparently have a great hunger for services.

So, it remains to be seen what these acquisitions will produce in terms of work for creative agencies and studios, but I predict busy times ahead. With all the interest and budget behind online advertising and marketing, we are quickly moving beyond the banner ad. Branded content, sponsored games and private label social networks are just the beginning. The audience is moving to the web and the advertisers are following.