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Microsoft is in talks to sell online ad firm Avenue A/Razorfish to WPP Group, Advertising Age reports (via Marketing
VOX). Microsoft inherited Avenue A with its $6 billion aQuantive purchase in 2007.
Avenue A is currently estimated to be worth $800 million, and it is not immediately clear why Microsoft wishes to unload it.
In exchange for the company, WPP may offer Microsoft its ad-serving tool, Open AdStream, plus cash. WPP absorbed AdStream with its $649 million purchase of 24/7 Real Media, mirroring the means by which Microsoft came to own Avenue A. (Both companies were also criticized for overpaying for their purchases.)
The 24/7 deal availed WPP to a search engine marketing business with a large China-based clientèle, a market the company is apparently intent on focusing upon. Today it announced its purchase of a minority stake in IGA Limited, the parent company of InGame Ad Interactive Technology. The latter is a leading dynamic in-game ad network in China.
Shares of Microsoft fell 0.3 percent, or nine cents, to $27.75 this morning.
Though off-air online and experiential advertising grew modestly as a part of the overall radio revenue pie, and election-related political ads increased in Q3, total radio ad revenues were down 9% to $4.97 billion for Q3 and down 10% for…
Only 28% of the audience of an average news program, website or magazine gets valuable information about products and services advertised there, making news venues less effective at conveying ad messages than all forms of media combined (see chart), according…
Target is one of the first brands to create an iPhone application. The Target “gift globe” allows iPhone users to shake their phones to launch a snow-fall effect.
When the snow clears, a gift idea from Target is revealed. Users…
Publicis has acquired full-service agency W&K Communications, continuing its Asia expansion that began several years ago.
W&K will be pulled under the umbrella of Publicis’s Burnett agency network, and will be renamed Leo Burnett Beijing Advertising, writes Adweek.
Other recent Publicis…
Conde Nast is removing Flip.com as an applicationon Facebook come Dec. 16. The website will also be shut down.
Flip launched in 2007 as an online scrapbooking site, reaching 300,000 users. But it failed to sustain the growth Conde Nast…
Effective immediately, any telemarketing call that delivers a prerecorded message must include a quick and easy way to opt-out of receiving future calls. The opt-out must work both for consumers who answer these calls in person and for those whose…
