Microsoft announced today that it had agreed to acquire AdECN, an advertising exchange platform company based near Santa Barbara.
AdECN offers a real-time, auction-based, neutral exchange for online display advertising that works in a similar way to stock exchanges. A member of the AdECN exchange buys on the exchange for its advertisers and sells on the exchange for its publishers.
AdECN is a direct competitor of Right Media, a company acquired by Yahoo in April for $680 million. Microsoft previously acquired online advertising network aQuantive for $6 billion in May.
Microsoft said the acquisition would assist Microsoft in building a comprehensive search and display advertising platform “that helps advertisers and publishers maximize ROI on digital advertising investments.”
AdECN was founded in 2003. The acquisition price was not disclosed.
Let the ad wars begin.
Excellent comment, Indian Videos. Your in-depth analysis of the post is much appreciated :-/
Microsoft is really pushing int the advertising world now. It will be good for everyone that someone is actually serious about competing in the space. Its astonishing that over the past 2 years MS has closed the gap between them and Yahoo by so much.
…..a transparent marketplace adds tremendous value to both sides of the transaction.
adECn raised $3.1M bridge Novus Ventures and closed an additional $1.5M in June 2005 from Accel Partners. The question is the exit price. The Techcrunch crew needs to drive through the Novus parking lot and see if there are any new Ferrari’s.
Another odd acquisition by MSN. I still want them to make their portal work before they threaten to do other web things to publishers around the world. These guys are a joke!
Wouldn’t Advertising.com be a company these giants would want to go after???
Or are they already owned by someone large…I’m too lazy to check myself.
#6
AOL already acquired Advertising.com
Eric,
thanks for clarifying…i knew there had to be someone who owned them.
Deal size is rumored to be $50-100 million.
Advertising.com is crap, the payouts we were supposed to get from them would have been awful – except they never paid us and would never respond to emails. TribalFusion is so much better.
I’m looking forward to some more serious competition in this arena. Google Adsense just doesn’t pay that well.
I do believe Adsense’s will have to think more after this. The giants are on a rumble….