Jeff Molander_

Google-DoubleClick Deal Makes aQuantive More Attractive

Ashkan:
Thanks for the reply.

<strong>Google is hoping that F500 advertisers and ad agencies turn to it, but most media planners and buyers want to shift their money across many media suppliers while relying on a centralized technology supplier.</strong&g...

Precisely, yes. Yet I do believe it's possible for GOOG to offer agencies themselves a set of automation-focused tools while concurrently offering them to a totally different set of (smaller) advertisers. I don't much buy into the notion that GOOG will, via the DCLK deal, control so many page views that it will disrupt media buyers. It will simply make their jobs easier operationally. I don't see GOOG's move as one that would result in large advertisers taking media buying in house over it. If they did... well... that would be just fine by me :)

I think they want to have everything fragmented, as you suggest, based on their need to exist. That existence is being challenged by GOOG, yes.

<strong>DCLK or AQNT's Atlas is the tech supplier... advertisers choose on or the other granted, but on the media end of things, I do not think that advertisers will welcome Google as a trusted partner.</strong>...

Why? Respectfully, you're suggesting that a company who has managed to offer zero transparency and put the click fraud issue to bed is not lining up to earn trust? Candidly, who needs trust when advertisers can achieve this kind of scale? I'm curious as to your thinking here. Believe me, I know some advertisers who don't like the fact that the same company who measures ad ROI and sells the ads (and won't do biz with GOOG over it) but I know even more who do not, and likely will not, consider such things when slapping down their charge card for AdWords.

<strong>Agencies get 5% planning, 5% buying and 5% creative, Google effectively wants to take away the first 2 5% fees. </strong>

Sure... but I don't see it this way. As I stated, GOOG isn't interested, IMO, in competing for airtime among major publishers and advertisers (who are all wrapped up in behavioral solutions like Tacoda). They're more interested in the same play at social media monetization. Think AdSense on steriods. As Publishing2.0's Scott Karp put it recently (when considering what inline text ads inside social media/blogs could do for GOOG):

“With cost-per-click ads, spammers create bogus pages where confused consumers click on ads in an effort to escape. But with CPA ads, clicking is not enough. The game is now to manipulate consumers not only to click, but to take some further action. And I don’t use the word ‘manipulate’ arbitrarily. This is about turning the web into one big pile of junk mail, aimed at getting you to sign up, buy, or commit to something that you hadn’t necessarily wanted.”

I see GOOG doing things to remove friction, not aiming at taking things away from people. Why can't media buyers still buy media from 5 sources now rather than 6? I'm arbitrarily picking numbers to demonstrate my point but I think you may be over-reaching here.

<strong>
Then there's the publisher flight risk, MTV for example uses DCLK. Will they do that for much longer?</strong>

Maybe I'm being dense here but I don't understand why MTV would leave. <strong>

Lastly, DCLK's inventory does not in any way give advertisers access to the best, premium real estate.</strong>

No but I don't think GOOG cares about that. Does GOOG have prime inventory in its AdSense network? Nope. Any of its syndication networks? No again. Does it need to improve this? Yes -- and a mid-tier display network like DCLK seems just fine.

Again, where does GOOG make its money? In my experience/analysis, it's among the smaller to mid-sized advertisers. Of course, we cannot ignore segments like domaining which power a sizable segment of GOOG, YHOO's revenues -- all based on inventory that mainstream analysts (I'll go as far as saying) don't even realize exists!

<strong>
Publishers control that directly... and since they will be more reluctant to use DCLK's software (and give up valuable data to Goog) and advertisers will be reluctant to trust Goog, I see a lot of risk here.</strong>

Fully understood but, again, I don't see GOOG as <strong>doing anything </strong>that suggests they give a hoot about large publishers or advertisers... anymore than they care to cater to smaller to mid-tiers.

I posted this at your 4/3 entry and will do so here as well as the comments relate directly...

Respectfully, your suggestion that agencies will drop DCLK's tool set based on automation fears seems extreme. As well, aQuantive has proven that a company can successfully navigate these waters -- offering agencies a tool set (Atlas), distribution (DrivePM) while directly competing with them (AvenueA). Why can't big G do the same? I guess time will tell!