September 4, 2007

Yahoo! Acquires Ad Network BlueLithium

Mark Hendrickson

20 comments »

Todd Teresi has announced over at Yodel Anecdotal that Yahoo! will acquire online global ad network BlueLithium for about $300 million in cash.

According to the announcement, BlueLithium is the fifth largest ad network in the United States and the second largest in the United Kingdom with 145 million unique visitors per month.

Teresi describes the acquisition of this company with over 100 employees as important for making Yahoo! “one of the world’s leading online display ad networks.” Apparently, Yahoo! believes that BlueLithium’s data analytics and behavioral targeting tools will help them get there.

Yahoo!’s acquisition of the company comes less than 5 months after Google acquired DoubleClick and less than 4 months after Microsoft acquired aQuantive, albeit for much larger sums ($3.1 and $6 billion respectively).

BlueLithium was founded in 2004 and named 2006 Innovator of the Year by AlwaysOn. Details are available in Yahoo!’s official press release.

Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

Yahoo! Pays $300.000.000 To Track You Better

September 4th, 2007 at 7:33 pm

StanleyWong.org

September 4th, 2007 at 8:25 pm

AOL Is Gussying Itself Up for an Advertising IPO

September 27th, 2007 at 10:13 am

MingleNow Dropped into Deadpool, Apparently by New Owner Yahoo

December 6th, 2007 at 5:26 pm

Business News Research » Yahoo Drops MingleNow into Deadpool

December 7th, 2007 at 12:12 am

Yahoo Drops MingleNow into Deadpool teasered @ Feed UP !!

December 8th, 2007 at 1:25 pm

Our Techno Lyrics » Blog Archive » The Year In Deals (2007 Edition)

December 29th, 2007 at 7:22 am

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Alaska Miller

September 4th, 2007 at 4:46 pm

They’re HQed in Santana Row right below my gym. and I never knew what they did but I guess it was good enough to be bought.
nitsuj

September 4th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

Dealt with them a bit in their early days and was never impressed by their tech or their people. They must have refined both, congrats to them.
Word Hugger

September 4th, 2007 at 5:00 pm

Compared to the acquisition prices of the other two, this is petty change.
Alex

September 4th, 2007 at 5:15 pm

…Word Hugger said: “this is petty change”

$300 million in 2.5 years is a crap load of money. Looks like they only took in $11.5M in vulture capital. Guessing that they gave away 25% (based on timing of investment 2005,track record of ceo) of the company that leaves founders and employees >$200M. That’s beautiful!!!!
Deals and Coupons

September 4th, 2007 at 5:41 pm

Never heard of them, but congrats!
Water Subject

September 4th, 2007 at 5:45 pm

I hope they add some competitiveness to the market:)
plan to use YPN on my agressively growing website.
Isaac

September 4th, 2007 at 6:03 pm

So, no more BlueLithium party at Ruby Skye for AdTech?

Congrats to BL!!!
WiredMike

September 4th, 2007 at 6:21 pm

Congrats, great deal and another huge industry acquisition! Congrats to the team at Blue Lithium!
Wayne Mulligan

September 4th, 2007 at 7:55 pm

Just as a side note - BlueLithium was/is in the middle of building a start-up communtiy based around nightlife events - http://www.minglenow.com.

I wonder how this will fit in with Yahoo! and Upcoming.org. Will this venture fade into a dark corner in Yahoo! or will they give it the sunlight and water it needs to grow and posper?
Planet Malaysia

September 4th, 2007 at 9:56 pm

same here. never heard about this company before.
Steve Ballmer

September 4th, 2007 at 11:14 pm

Blue Lithium, isn’t that some kind of medicine?
Is Yahoo going into pharmacuticals?
MS is doing it too!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Duncan

September 5th, 2007 at 6:43 am

WOW.

Horrible tech people - Horrible management and the result??? 300 million…..WOW.

Looks like any ad network can demand dollars right now….
Jay

September 5th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

Congratulations to the founders, for selling yet another massively overvalued company.

I suppose they’ll create value by taking money from bad decision-makers at Yahoo!, and spending it on houses, cars, sports teams, and other crap. Welcome (back) to the digital fraud economy.

People, support your country. Don’t buy crappy internet companies, or the companies who buy them! Invest in your future instead. Hardware designers rule!