Deals & Moves

Google Inc. began trading on the Nasdaq under ticker GOOG on August 19, 2004 after a Dutch-auction IPO priced at $85.00 per share, raising about $1.67 billion.

Marchex completed its IPO of 4,000,000 shares of Class B common stock at $6.50 per share (~$26M raised), beginning trading on the Nasdaq National Market under ticker MCHX on March 31, 2004.

ValueClick, Inc. completed its initial public offering in March 2000, listing its common stock on the Nasdaq National Market under ticker VCLK.

Avenue A, Inc. went public in February 2000 via an IPO of 6,037,500 shares at $24.00 per share on the Nasdaq National Market under ticker AVEA, raising approximately $132.5 million in net proceeds.

24/7 Media went public in August 1998 via an IPO of 3,250,000 shares at $14.00 each on the Nasdaq National Market under ticker TFSM, raising roughly $45.5 million in gross proceeds.

DoubleClick Inc. priced its IPO of 3.5 million shares at $17.00 on the Nasdaq National Market under ticker DCLK, raising approximately $59.5 million in February 1998.

Yahoo! Inc. held its initial public offering on April 12, 1996, raising about $33.8 million by selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each on the Nasdaq under ticker YHOO.

Twitter's entry into mobile programmatic — MoPub's mobile SSP became Twitter's ad-tech backbone. Sold to AppLovin in 2021.

After 20 months of antitrust review, AT&T closed the Time Warner deal — added HBO + Warner Bros + Turner to the DirecTV + Xandr stack.

The defining dot-com merger: AOL acquired Time Warner in an all-stock deal at peak dot-com valuations. Considered one of the worst mergers in corporate history.

Identity resolution becomes a structural layer — Acxiom's LiveRamp acquisition made onboarding offline data into digital ads a packaged product. LiveRamp later spun out as standalone in 2018.

Marissa Mayer's big bet on a younger user base. Yahoo wrote down most of the value in 2016; sold to Automattic in 2019 for ~$3M.

Amazon outbid Google for the live-streaming platform. Twitch became Amazon's gaming + streaming + ad-supported video front-line.

Early ad-server consolidation: DoubleClick acquired NetGravity in stock deal that combined two leading early-internet ad-serving platforms.

Cross-channel campaign management — Neolane became Adobe Campaign, a core piece of the Adobe Experience Cloud marketing suite.

The deal that created modern ad tech: Google's acquisition of DoubleClick gave it the buy-side ad-server stack and the foundation for what became Google Ad Manager + DV360.

Verizon's first major media play — gave it AOL's ad stack (One platform, ad-tech), Huffington Post, and the foundation of what became Oath/Verizon Media.

Yahoo's push into ad exchanges: Right Media's exchange became the foundation of Yahoo's ad-buying platform.

Salesforce's push into social marketing — Buddy Media's tools for managing brand presence on Facebook + Twitter became part of Marketing Cloud.

Yahoo's second video-programmatic bet. BrightRoll became Yahoo's programmatic video DSP. Eventually folded into Verizon Media.

Adobe's entry into web analytics + marketing measurement, foundation of what became Adobe Analytics + Adobe Experience Cloud.

Oracle's entry into the DMP business. BlueKai data became the audience layer of Oracle's marketing cloud (later Oracle Data Cloud).

Microsoft's biggest acquisition. LinkedIn's 433M-user professional graph became core to Microsoft's B2B + recruitment + advertising strategy.

Microsoft's biggest-ever ad-tech bet — buying aQuantive (parent of Atlas + Avenue A | Razorfish + DrivePM) to compete with Google's DoubleClick deal. Wrote off $6.2B in 2012.