Digital ad gatekeeper DoubleClick plans to open an online exchange for publishers and advertisers that’ll make it as easy to sell online ads as it is to sell goods on eBay.
When the Exchange goes live in the third quarter, publishers and other sellers
will be able to make specific inventory available for purchase and
define a minimum bid value for it while specifying rules to restrict
certain advertisers, formats and content.
Industry sources familiar with the matter told internetnews.com that the announcement was a clever way for DoubleClick to increase its value while Google and Microsoft bid near $2 billion to buy the company. He said the announcement
might be meant to justify such high bids for a company that many believe
brought in only “around $60 million” in earnings before interest,
taxes, debt and amortization.
Neither Google nor Microsoft returned requests for comment.
A DoubleClick spokeswoman told internetnews.com she could not
comment on rumors and speculation.
The exchange will allow buyers to specify the inventory they wish to purchase and then control their bid price so it’s automatically adjusted in line with performance.
The company said it would provide a single billing and payment
point for all transactions and plans to eventually support
emerging technologies, such as video, in-game and future forms of
digital advertising. The new exchange will be fully integrated with
DoubleClick’s DART ad management platform, the company said.
DoubleClick product manager Scott Spencer told internetnews.com the company will share revenue with publishers.
The DoubleClick
Advertising Exchange is currently in a limited beta with a select group of
buyers and sellers in the United States, but the company said it
expects the exchange to be available globally by the end of the year.
The exchange will not be the first marketplace
of its kind. And if Google or Microsoft buy the company, they will not
be the first of the big three search engines to make a major
investment in such a marketplace.
Last October, Yahoo took a 20 percent stake in Right Media, creator
of the Right Media Exchange, an online exchange for publishers and
advertisers.
Right Media CEO Michael Walrayth told internetnews.com his
company has been prepared to see DoubleClick join the field for
the last six to nine months and that he’s glad to see the day arrive.
“I think it’s great for us. We pioneered this space, and so to have
DoubleClick, Microsoft and Google saying this is an area of interest
is a lot of validation for what we do,” Walrayth said.
He said he’s
confident Right Media can continue to lead while others join,
pointing out that its exchange trades over 150 billion impressions a
month and expects to trade over $500 million of media in 2007.
“When people say, ‘How are you going to deal with this threat?’ we tend to think, ‘How are they going to deal with us?'”
