Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
#2Interestingly, aQuantive (formerly Avenue A Media) was founded by Nick Hanauer, one of the people profiled in GQ's recent article[1] on income inequality. He was also one of the first investors in Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
Re: Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
#3What truly amazes me is the fact that Ballmer is allowed to keep his job despite one colossal blunder after another.
Re: Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
#4Now do it for Skype.
Re: Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
#5Interesting. On the surface this seems like a colossal failure. It could also be an accounting trick too. Write the whole thing off now, and people view it as a non-recurring charge. Then when the unit does something/anything to be profitable, it looks like positive earnings rather than a less-bad loss.
Re: Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
#6now when is zynga going to writedown 180mm for OMGPOP.
Re: Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
#7What truly amazes me is the fact that Ballmer is allowed to keep his job despite one colossal blunder after another.
Re: Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
#8Interesting. On the surface this seems like a colossal failure. It could also be an accounting trick too. Write the whole thing off now, and people view it as a non-recurring charge. Then when the unit does something/anything to be profitable, it looks like positive earnings rather than a less-bad loss.
Yup. It also has the nice effect of inflating the P/E ratio for Microsoft, at least temporarily.
Re: Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
#9I was part of aQuantive on the Avenue A | Razorfish side and was there for about 2 years leading up to the MSFT acquisition and was also part of another MSFT acquisition (Farecast) so I want to provide some context/opinion on where the business was at it when it was purchased.
- The Atlas ad serving platform and related ad exchange platform was one of the top ad systems alongside DART, Valueclick, and others. There was also a steady stream of new leads to Atlas as the agency side acquired new clients. I think the opportunity that was missed was to tie the MSN search business with the banner/rich media ad serving business and create a single platform to reach and remarket based on search intent. A lot of this is done today but this deal was 5 years ago and would have been more groundbreaking.
- The agency side of the business wasn't interesting to Microsoft but at that time, Avenue A | Razorfish was the top digital agency in the US with clients from Expedia to Nike to Best Buy. The team at AA|RF had a direct line to the CMOs and worked in most cases as an extension of the marketing teams for these Fortune 500 companies and MS could have leveraged this team as a focus group and to enroll these clients to test innovative ways to market across a publishing network like MSN (still a top portal property). I don't think this was done and again another opportunity missed.
Overall, I just felt that there was the potential for aQuantive to help Microsoft close the ad revenue/platform gap with Google and they missed the boat.
Re: Microsoft Writing Off Nearly All of the $6.3 Billion it Paid For aQuantive
#10now when is zynga going to writedown 180mm for OMGPOP.
"Draw Something" is the #55 paid app on the app store STILL. So clearly it's bringing in and has brought in a ton of revenue since the ac (acquisition was in March). Sure not $180MM but it was also an acqui-hire. I think this could have ended up being a great deal for them, despite the negativity. It's not all about one game.