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February 5, 2008

AOL acquires affiliate network to boost ad platform

Mike Butcher

17 comments »

AOL has acquired buy.at, a leading affiliate marketing network backed by VC house DFJ Esprit, reports TechCrunch UK. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but well-placed sources say the deal is worth in the region of $150 million (£75 million). Although launched in the UK in 2002, buy.at now has a much bigger US operation, which is what attracted AOL’s interest. buy.at will now operate as a wholly-owned business unit of Advertising.com, part of AOL’s Platform-A organization, to which it added four other companies in the last year including Tacoda, AdTech, Third Screen Media and Quigo. Unlike previous deals which were more about ad serving, the buy.at deal is about getting closer relationships with retailers. AOL is understood to have tried to buy another affiliate network, Tradedoubler, a year ago but the deal foundered with the latter’s shareholders, who couldn’t agree on price.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 9:31 am 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.

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  1. AOL’s Advertising.com division acquires buy.at - Page 3 - Affiliate Marketing

    February 5th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

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  1. Rajiv Dingra

    February 5th, 2008 at 9:41 am

    One more portal buying an online advertising company. I guess its herd mentality all the way!

  2. PEG

    February 5th, 2008 at 10:00 am

    So what’s the price, $43m or $150m??

  3. Vini- Triimart

    February 5th, 2008 at 10:07 am

    Acquisition grow the network, Advertising and affiliate networks are main target of big enterpreneurs like Yahoo, Google, AOL, Microsoft and others. Acquisitions has become usual news.

  4. Mike Butcher

    February 5th, 2008 at 10:11 am

    @PEG - $150m ballpark. Slight confusion before, sorry.

  5. Yakov

    February 5th, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Why don’t ad networks call themselves widget networks and vice versa?

  6. Dabo

    February 5th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Just a correction on this story, buy.at are far bigger in th UK than the US at the moment. They’ve launched the Ticketmaster programme over there last year but have hundreds of programmes running in the UK.

  7. No Surprise

    February 5th, 2008 at 10:30 am

    Good move by AOL, especially given the huge forecast for online ad spending over the next 4 - 5 years. Congrats to Buy.at.

  8. JS

    February 5th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    That’s AOL problem, they don’t buy enough companies! If they would only sharpen their pencils and buy a lot more companies, that would make them a successful business.

  9. Technicle

    February 5th, 2008 at 11:04 am

    So much activity from AOL recently…

  10. Josh

    February 5th, 2008 at 11:17 am

    I think AOl is setting up in ad group and SEO field.

  11. MonkeyTalk

    February 5th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    AOL = PILE OF JUNK

  12. fizetés + állás

    February 5th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    it is very strange with the austrian url :-)

  13. Wes

    February 5th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    I think this is a good move by AOL and will definitely help to tap into the European market.

  14. Alex

    February 5th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Anybody know buy.at revenue and profits? just wondering about multiples being paid for them…

  15. Richard

    February 6th, 2008 at 1:43 am

    Don’t have profit figures but buy.at says its revenues are between £25m and £30m.

  16. I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog

    February 6th, 2008 at 2:46 am

    According to their accounts, buy.at’s EBIT in FY06 was £1.2m on £13.0m turnover. Assuming constant margin, that would mean FY07 EBIT of £2.2-2.7m on Richard’s figures.

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