Continuing this year's major trend of online advertising consolidation, AOL has agreed to acquire content-targeted advertising firm Quigo. Reuters is reporting the price of the deal at around $340 million. AOL CEO Randy Falco told Reuters that this was likely the last big acquisition for AOL in terms of their advertising strategy.
"With Quigo, we are putting the final pieces of Platform-A in place. We will be able to offer advertisers and publishers the most advanced set of tools, including contextual and behavioral targeting, superior analytics, and access to the largest display network in the marketplace," said Falco in a press release.
Quigo is AOL's third major ad acquisition this year. In July, the company agreed to buy behavioral targeting firm Tacoda, for a reported $275 million in cash. Last May, AOL purchased a controlling stake in AdTech AG. This buying spree compliments Advertising.com, which AOL purchased in 2004. AOL also owns wireless ad company Third Screen Media (which it acquired this year, as well) and Lightningcast, which serves video ads.
AOL's online ad growth fell 13% in the second quarter, so the company is hoping that its revamped ad division (the so-called "Platform-A") will help them take on Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! who have each also made major acquisitions in the online advertising market this year. According to AOL, Platform-A will reach 91% of the online audience.
Quigo, which has over 500 publisher relationships and about 3,000 advertisers, will operate as a subsidiary of AOL under the Platform-A umbrella. Quigo’s AdSonar technology lets ad buyers can purchase keyword-targeted ads on web pages in much the same way as Google's AdSense.
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I think that this acquisition follows a recent ad deal between Time Inc. and Quigo. It just proves a trend that media companies and large publishers would like to be more and more independent on Google.
Posted by: Yakov | November 7, 2007 8:50 AM