Written By Kate Zimmermann | May 18, 2007 | Share This |

This morning Microsoft announced that it will acquire aQuantive for nearly twice it’s market value, or $6 billion in cash. That makes aQuantive the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history. From Microsoft’s press release,

“The acquisition also provides Microsoft increased depth in building and supporting next generation advertising solutions and environments such as cross media planning, video-on-demand and IPTV. Combining aQuantive’s technologies and services with Microsoft’s portfolio will provide value for the industry’s key constituencies as follows:

Advertisers and Ad Agencies will benefit from a world-class media planning, buying and campaign management solution to drive maximum ROI and optimize their reach to audiences across the increasingly fragmented, interactive media landscape.

Media Owners/Publishers will gain access to best-in-class inventory optimization and monetization solutions across a full suite of rich media, video and targeting capabilities.

The broader advertising ecosystem will benefit from the leading interactive advertising agency, Avenue A | Razorfish, continuing to serve its impressive client roster, while also ebmedding the voice of the marketer into Microsoft’s next generation advertising solutions and services.”

aQuantive is the parent company of three major online marketing companies - Avenue A | Razorfish, Atlas, and DrivePM. It’s acquisition comes just a month after Google bought DoubleClick, and a day after WPP bought 24/7 Real Media. As Greg Sterling writes, “The consolidation continues…and when the dust settles there will only be a small number of very large firms that control 90%+ of all online advertising.”

Does this rash of acquisitions signal a maturation of online advertising, or is it, like an arms race, unnatural growth in response to overwhelming demand?

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