Google Struggling to Buy DoubleClick, Rivals Overjoyed!

Since Google announced the agreement to buy DoubleClick, the entire online advertising market joined forces to fight against the Mountain View company because a potential deal could make the search giant the most powerful player in the industry. Many of the Google rivals already took attitude and made acquisitions or deals to bring new technologies to their clients. AOL, a company that didn't say a thing about the DoubleClick acquisition, acquired Quigo today as a latest attempt to remain in the online advertising competition. The financial terms were not disclosed but this is obviously a move intended to make AOL a more powerful presence in the market.

In case you didn't hear about it, Quigo is a company that offers several types of online advertising, enabling the advertisers to choose from text or video ads with multiple pricing options: cost-per-click, cost per impression, or cost per time basis.

"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 Randy Falco, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AOL. "And by offering advertisers the ability to target ads based on the content of Web pages using Quigo's AdSonar technology, we will be able to maximize the value of publishers' ad inventory."

As I said, many of the Google rivals already made acquisitions or strategic moves to improve their advertising technologies. For example, Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6 billion while the Sunnyvale company Yahoo acquired the remaining shares of Right Media. But this new deal is not only useful for AOL because Quigo can also bring lots of consumers to its advertising technology.

"This is a tremendous opportunity for Quigo, and we are delighted at the opportunity to work with AOL and Platform-A to extend the reach of our premium advertising solutions," said Mike Yavonditte, Quigo's Chief Executive Officer. "AOL has shown its commitment to becoming the world's leading display advertising network, and we're delighted to have the chance to be part of this effort."