DoubleClick
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| DoubleClick | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Subsidiary of Google Inc. |
| Founded | New York, New York (1996) |
| Headquarters | New York, New York |
| Key people | - David Rosenblatt, CEO - Stephanie Abramson, Executive VP and General Counsel - Neal Mohan, Senior VP of Strategy and Product Development - Stuart Frankel, Senior VP of DoubleClick & GM of Performics - John M. Rehl, Senior VP, Global Technical Services |
| Industry | Online advertising |
| Products | DART family includes DFP (For Publishers), DFA (For Advertisers), DS (DART Search), Motif (Rich Media), DE (Enterprise), Sales Manager (Publisher), Media Visor(Advertisers), Adapt (Publishers), Doubleclick Advertising Exchange (Both Publishers & Advertisers) |
| Website | www.doubleclick.com |
DoubleClick is a company that develops and provides Internet ad serving services. Its clients include agencies, marketers (Universal McCann Interactive, AKQA etc.) and publishers who service customers like Microsoft, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Motorola, L'Oreal, Palm, Inc., Visa USA, Nike, Carlsberg among others. DoubleClick's headquarters are in New York City.
DoubleClick was founded in 1996. It was formerly listed as DCLK on the NASDAQ, and was purchased by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in July 2005. Unlike many other dot-com companies, it survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble. In March 2008, Google formally acquired DoubleClick.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] Start
Internet Advertising Network was started by Kevin O'Connor and Dwight Merriman in 1995. IAN was acquired by Poppe-Tyson (a division of Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt advertising) and named DoubleClick in 1996. DoubleClick was first in the online media rep business -- that is, representing websites to sell advertising space to marketers. In 1997 it began offering the online ad serving and management technology they had developed to other publishers as the DART services. During the dot-com downturn, DoubleClick divested its media business, and today focuses on uploading ads and reporting their performance.
[edit] Early developments
In 1999, at a cost of US $1.7 billion, DoubleClick merged with the data-collection agency Abacus Direct, which works with offline catalog companies. This raised fears that the combined company would link anonymous Web-surfing profiles with personally identifiable information (name, address, telephone number, e-mail, address, etc.) collected by Abacus. This merger made waves and was heavily criticized by privacy organizations. Controversy grew when it was discovered that sensitive financial information users entered on a popular Web site that offered financial software was being sent to DoubleClick, which delivered the ads. Much of this controversy was generated by statements made by Jason Catlett of Junkbusters, claiming that DoubleClick was or intended to do things that it had never mentioned or included in any planned or announced service. Due to the negative press, DoubleClick dropped any integration of their services with those of Abacus, and instigated stronger privacy policies and oversight.
In April 2005, Hellman & Friedman, a San Francisco-based private equity firm, announced its intent to acquire the company and operate it as two separate divisions with two separate CEOs for TechSolutions and Data Marketing. The deal was closed in July 2005. Hellman & Friedman announced in December 2006 the sale of Abacus to Epsilon Interactive.
[edit] Acquisition by Google, Inc.
Google announced on April 14, 2007 that it had come to a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash.[1]
US lawmakers have investigated possible privacy and antitrust implications of the proposed acquisition.[2] At hearings, representatives from Microsoft warned of a potential monopolistic effect, which provided industry observers and satirists with plenty of fodder given Microsoft's own such behavior.[3]
On December 20, 2007, the FTC approved Google's purchase of DoubleClick, saying, "After carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition." [4] European Union regulators followed suit on March 11, 2008. [5]
On March 11, 2008, European Union regulators approved the purchase of DoubleClick. Google completed the acquisition later that day.
On April 2, 2008, Google announced it would cut 300 jobs at DoubleClick due to organizational redundancies. Select employees are invited to apply for open positions within the company. [6]
[edit] Criticism
DoubleClick is often linked with the controversy over spyware because browser HTTP cookies are set to track users as they travel from website to website and record what commercial advertisements they view and select while browsing. [7]
According to a San Francisco IT consulting group, although DoubleClick does offer an opt-out page, this only affects cookies; DoubleClick continues to track users via IP addresses.[8]
[edit] Customer profiles
In order to create profiles, information such as IP address, domain, browser, local time and date, operating system, and page viewed is collected.
Doubleclick's tools could be used in ways that would mean that it holds personally identifiable information. The company explains that "the personal information collected is used only for the purpose for which it is requested". The information stored on DoubleClick servers belongs to DoubleClick's clients. According to DoubleClick, it generally uses the data only as a "statistical or aggregate information" source. The clients themselves promise contractually not to use information that "DoubleClick could recognize as either sensitive or personally identifiable" to target ads source.
[edit] Products
DoubleClick offers technology products and services that are sold primarily to advertising agencies and media companies to allow clients to traffic, target, deliver, and report on their interactive advertising campaigns. The company's main product line is known as DART, which is designed for advertisers and publishers.
DART automates the administration effort in the ad buying cycle for advertisers (Media Visor) and the management of ad inventory for publishers (Sales Manager). It is intended to increase the purchasing efficiency of advertisers and to minimize unsold inventory for publishers.
DART Enterprise is the rebranded version of NetGravity AdServer, which DoubleClick acquired with its purchase of NetGravity in 1999.
In 2004 DoubleClick acquired Performics[9]. This company had a PPC search management system which was rebadged DART search and the reporting functions were integrated with DART into their reportcentral system.
DoubleClick Advertising Exchange (released Q2 2007) attempts to go even further by connecting both media buyers and sellers on an exchange much like a traditional stock exchange (NYSE, LSE or NASDAQ)
[edit] Data collection
DoubleClick targets along various criteria. Targeting can be accomplished using IP addresses, business rules set by the client or by reference to information about users stored within cookies on their machines. Some of the types of information collected are:
In addition, the cookie information may be used to target ads based on the number of times the user has been exposed to any given message. This is known as "frequency capping".
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ Google Press Release, 13 April 2007
- ^ US lawmakers plan Google-Doubleclick deal hearings
- ^ Advertising Age
- ^ Google wins antitrust OK to buy DoubleClick | Deals | Mergers & Acquisitions | Reuters
- ^ The Associated Press: Google Takes Control of DoubleClick
- ^ CNET: Google to lay off 300 at DoubleClick
- ^ Security Problem Reports (SPRs)
- ^ imedia news report
