Panama Not Enough To Battle Google: Yahoo Acquires RightMedia
Michael Arrington
51 comments »
Yahoo announced today that it will acquire the 80% of advertising network RightMedia that it doesn’t already own for $680 million in cash and Yahoo stock.
Yahoo previously bought 20% of the company in a $45 million Series B round of funding announced in October 2006. The company has raised over $50 million to date.
This move counters Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick earlier this month for $3.1 billion, and signals that Yahoo wants more weapons in its arsenal to fight the ongoing online advertising war beyond their new Panama release.
RightMedia runs an advertising marketplace that allows for much more efficient advertsing pricing than older negotiated models (something still in the planning stages at DoubleClick). See our coverage of their RMX Direct product from August 2005.
RightMedia also tends to work with large intermediate ad brokers and addresses the short tail of the ad market (as does DoubleClick), whereas Overture and Adsense are definitely long tail products with many smaller advertisers and publishers.
Our site has 200,000+ daily pageviews. We applied for Yahoo! Publisher Network via their online form, and they did not even acknowledge the application via automatic email. In 2 weeks we applied again, same result.
I guess they are after something bigger, or maybe we are not hip enough among web2.0 scensters, or did not apply for Sequoia funding, maybe that’s the problem…
Sticking to Adsense for now.
Wow that’s amazing. And yet you wonder. Yahoo could have probably bought all of RightMedia’s publishers for $680 million.
They should have bought it earlier and for much less
instead of trying to grow through acquisition, yahoo should in my opinion concentrate on making their existing more attractive and easier to user. Their market share here in Germany is dropping….
War between google and yahoo = more competition=low cost advertisement
This is a great play for Yahoo, particularly so, as they already held a 20% stake in Right Media. Yahoo! is here to stay, and such a move shows Google that they’re a formidable contender for online and offline ads.
The question remains, what is Microsoft’s next move?
I need to start my own advertising network soon and sell it to these guys for a couple of million.
That would be sweet!
People are making a lot of money thru online marketting
Cool
This is the Yahoo response to Google acquisition of DoubleClick. I dont undestand what is Microsoft strategy.
I think this is a better deal than Google got for DC. Right Media’s Exchange is an innovative platform as is RMX-Direct, whilst DC’s importance is more legacy and reputation than any actual technology in my opinion.
It does look like MS will have to get in the ring soon with an acquisition of an established ad network for publisher and advertiser base as well as for their technology. I think Valueclick would be a good choice for their successful CPM/CPC network as well as having CJ for a CPA platform.
Ahh Yahoo’s profits were in the tank because they did not have full ownership of Rightmedia. I get it now. I thought it was because they didnt have the ability to deliver relevant ads and pay publishers a premium for that delivery.
Panama+Right Media must be the answer.
Yahoo had a chance earlier to at least compete with Adsense. I remember we tried them and the did a very poor job of showing relevant ads to our pages.
From what I hear, they’re still doing a poor job with their AdSense competitor. Just imagine if they had setup a team to fix the problems with their publisher product! We’d at least have a competitor to Google ads for maybe 25% of the space. Not chicken change by any means.
rightMedia = Broadcast.com ? - who is the next mark cuban?
Per the PR…frictionless? Indeed: FrictionlessAdvertising.com
Although they already had a piece of the company, I hope the increased investment fits into their overall strategic plan and that they are not simply reacting to Google’s purchase of DoubleClick.
Re: Mark Zuckerburg: “after which it went brain dead like Cuban’s dad”
not sure what the back story here is, but makaing fun of a person’s mental/physical health is very low and morally disgusting.
re: the acquisition - solid move by Yahoo to take advantage of a earlier investment in RM as an acquisition strategy - Y’s initial investment gave them the inside track on this deal.
RM should send a bottle of Dom to Google to thank them for heating up the waters in their space.
Obviously it is morally disgusting. I am after all a child of the internet. I like to make fun of people.
This is great. As much as I like Google, I’m not too impressed with their AdSense system and would like to see more choices in the market place. Would help small time publishers like myself get better options.
GJ
http://www.60in3.com
wow, i am surprised that zuckerberg would lay down the gauntlet to yahoo using a tc forum. those harvard kids are cheeky
what is amazing about both the google - double click and the yahoo - right media acquisitions is the fact that none of the big boys, yahoo!, google or microsoft came up with their own technologies for display ads. it is such an obvious progression from adwords.
now that google and yahoo! have absorbed these display ad companies, we need a company to simplify the process for advertisers by coming up with an agregator site that allows an advertiser to easily advertise in all of the major sites: google, yahoo!, msn, aol for both text and display ads using one campaign engine. for a small business owner, having to go in and create multiple different campaigns for all these sites is a real pain and time sucker. basically we need a meebo for on-line advertising.
I tried to apply for Yahoo’s adsense and sponsored search… tens of thousands of unique hits per day… just like the other poster, I never heard back. YO YAHOO, I WANT TO SHOW YOUR ADS ON MY FREAKING WEB SITES!!! I hope these folks wake up to reality soon or have some master plan that the rest of us don’t understand.
“Mark Zuckerberg” said: Obviously it is morally disgusting. I am after all a child of the internet. I like to make fun of people.
A**hole, I find no humor at all. My mother died of a brain tumor that slowly killed her.
I always find it amazing when somebody posts something as stupid as you have, then you get called out by someone saying “it’s wrong” ,and you come back to justify it in yet another posting.
@ Bill
Do you realize this cannot possibly be the real Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook fame?) Clearly someone is using that name to post here, and is trying to be as inflammatory as possible. TROLL ALERT.
Congrats to Pat and the Right Media Team. If people took time out to look at your service, they will realize how innovative it truly is and how explosive your growth has been.
感觉确实不错.Yahoo要发表了.
به نام خداوند مهربان
سلام
نظر من در اين باره اين است كه گوگل فعلاً قول اينترنتي است و هيچ شركت
ديگه نميتونه با اون مبارزه كنه چه ياهو و چه شكت ديگه
Yahoo! will increase its participation in the Right Media Exchange both as a buyer and seller to help increase liquidity in the exchange while empowering publishers and advertisers to generate more value for themselves within this vibrant marketplace.
http://news.taume.com/World-Bu.....Media-1107
The price Yahoo! paid for RightMedia seems to be awfully steep. I guess they thought they could not afford to let Google increase their lead, thus the purchase. I hope that it results in improved competition as advertisers need every single option they can get when it comes to web publicity.