DoubleClick
Encyclopedia
DoubleClick is a subsidiary of Google
that develops and provides Internet ad serving
services. Its clients include agencies, marketers (Universal McCann Interactive, AKQA
etc.) and publishers who serve customers like Microsoft
, General Motors
, Coca-Cola
, Motorola
, L'Oréal
, Palm, Inc.
, Apple Inc., Visa USA, Nike
, Carlsberg among others. DoubleClick's headquarters is in New York City
, United States
.
DoubleClick was founded in 1995 by Kevin O'Connor
and Dwight Merriman
. It was formerly listed as "DCLK" on the NASDAQ
, and was purchased by private equity firms Hellman & Friedman
and JMI Equity
in July 2005. In March 2008, Google
acquired DoubleClick for US$3.1 billion. Unlike many other dot-com companies
, it survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble
. Today, it focuses on uploading ads and reporting their performance.
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 advertisements. 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. The Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into DoubleClick's collection and compilation of personal information shortly after the Abacus acquisition, in reaction to which DoubleClick announced that it would not merge the DoubleClick and Abacus databases. The FTC concluded its investigation in early 2001.
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, whose parent company is AllianceData
Systems Corporation.
announced on April 13, 2007 that it had come to a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleClick for US $3.1 billion in cash.
US lawmakers have investigated possible privacy and antitrust
implications of the proposed acquisition. At hearings, representatives from Microsoft
warned of a potential monopolistic
effect, the irony of which was not lost on the committee chairperson.
On December 20, 2007, the FTC
approved Google's purchase of DoubleClick from its owners Hellman & Friedman
and JMI Equity
, saying, "After carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition." European Union
regulators followed suit on March 11, 2008. Google completed the acquisition later that day.
On April 2, 2008, Google announced it would cut 300 jobs at DoubleClick due to organizational redundancies. Selected employees would be matched within the Google organization as per position and experience.
because browser HTTP cookie
s are set to track users as they travel from website
to website and record which commercial advertisements they view and select while browsing. DoubleClick is considered to be malware by several commercial organizations (Adaware, Symantec
, Spybot
) which detect it and provide the tools to block/remove it.
DoubleClick has also been criticized for misleading users by offering an opt-out option that is insufficiently effective. According to a San Francisco IT consulting group, although the opt-out option affects cookies, DoubleClick does not allow users to opt out of IP address-based tracking.
DoubleClick with MSN were shown serving malware via drive-by download exploits by a group of attackers for some time in December 2010.
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 (DART for Advertisers, or DFA) and the management of ad inventory for publishers (DART for Publishers, or DFP). 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. Unlike the DFA and DFP products which are both Software as a Service SaaS
products, DART Enterprise is a standalone product running on Linux.
In 2004 DoubleClick acquired Performics
. Performics offers affiliate marketing
, search engine optimization
, and search engine marketing
solutions. The marketing solutions were integrated into the core DART system and rebranded DART search.
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
.
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
".
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
that develops and provides Internet ad serving
Ad serving
Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on web sites. Ad serving technology companies provide software to web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads that will make the website or advertiser most money, and monitor progress of different...
services. Its clients include agencies, marketers (Universal McCann Interactive, AKQA
AKQA
AKQA is a creative agency specializing in interactive marketing. The privately held company has offices in London, San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C, Amsterdam, Berlin, Shanghai and San Salvador, totally roughly 1,000 full-time employees.-Philosophy:...
etc.) and publishers who serve customers like Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
, Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
, Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, L'Oréal
L'Oréal
The L'Oréal Group is the world's largest cosmetics and beauty company. With its registered office in Paris and head office in the Paris suburb of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France, it has developed activities in the field of cosmetics...
, Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
, Apple Inc., Visa USA, Nike
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...
, Carlsberg among others. DoubleClick's headquarters is in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
DoubleClick was founded in 1995 by Kevin O'Connor
Kevin O'Connor (entrepreneur)
Kevin O'Connor is an employee of DoubleClick, an Internet advertisement-technology company founded by William Miller, and the founder of O'Connor Ventures...
and Dwight Merriman
Dwight Merriman
Dwight Merriman is an Internet executive and entrepreneur in New York City's Silicon Alley. Best known for having co-founding DoubleClick together with Kevin O'Connor and serving as its CTO for 10 years, Merriman currently serves as the Founder and CEO of 10gen .DoubleClick was sold in 2005 for...
. It was formerly listed as "DCLK" on the NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
, and was purchased by private equity firms Hellman & Friedman
Hellman & Friedman
Hellman & Friedman is a private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman, that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts and minority growth capital investments....
and JMI Equity
JMI Equity
JMI Equity is a growth equity firm focused on investing in leading software, internet, business services and healthcare IT companies. JMI provides capital for growth, recapitalizations, acquisitions and buyouts. Founded in 1992, JMI has invested in more than 100 companies throughout North...
in July 2005. In March 2008, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
acquired DoubleClick for US$3.1 billion. Unlike many other dot-com companies
Dot-com company
A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com , is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" .While the term can refer to present-day companies, it is also used specifically to refer to companies with...
, it survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
. Today, it focuses on uploading ads and reporting their performance.
Early developments
DoubleClick was founded as one of the earliest known Application Service Provider (ASP) for internet "ad-serving", primarily banner ads. After an IPO on the NASDAQ under the "DCLK" ticker symbol in early 1998, the company was inappropriately associated with an internet traffic report including Yahoo!, AOL, Alta Vista and Excite where the company was listed within the top 10 internet websites in the world -- when in fact it was delivering as many ad impressions at the time as these early major internet properties were delivering page views. Its DoubleClick DART (Dynamic Advertising Reporting & Targeting) ASP/SaaS ad-serving technology was second-to-none, allowing clear targeting & reporting of ad-serving per media property for websites within its network and technology sectors.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 advertisements. 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. The Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into DoubleClick's collection and compilation of personal information shortly after the Abacus acquisition, in reaction to which DoubleClick announced that it would not merge the DoubleClick and Abacus databases. The FTC concluded its investigation in early 2001.
In April 2005, Hellman & Friedman
Hellman & Friedman
Hellman & Friedman is a private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman, that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts and minority growth capital investments....
, 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, whose parent company is AllianceData
AllianceData
Alliance Data is a publicly traded, leading provider of loyalty and marketing solutions derived from the capture and analysis of transaction-rich data that provides insight into how and why consumers make certain purchases.-History:Alliance Data was formed from the December 2, 1996 merger...
Systems Corporation.
Acquisition by Google, Inc.
GoogleGoogle
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
announced on April 13, 2007 that it had come to a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleClick for US $3.1 billion in cash.
US lawmakers have investigated possible privacy and antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
implications of the proposed acquisition. At hearings, representatives from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
warned of a potential monopolistic
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
effect, the irony of which was not lost on the committee chairperson.
On December 20, 2007, the FTC
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
approved Google's purchase of DoubleClick from its owners Hellman & Friedman
Hellman & Friedman
Hellman & Friedman is a private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman, that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts and minority growth capital investments....
and JMI Equity
JMI Equity
JMI Equity is a growth equity firm focused on investing in leading software, internet, business services and healthcare IT companies. JMI provides capital for growth, recapitalizations, acquisitions and buyouts. Founded in 1992, JMI has invested in more than 100 companies throughout North...
, saying, "After carefully reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition." European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
regulators followed suit on March 11, 2008. Google completed the acquisition later that day.
On April 2, 2008, Google announced it would cut 300 jobs at DoubleClick due to organizational redundancies. Selected employees would be matched within the Google organization as per position and experience.
Criticism
DoubleClick is often linked with the controversy over spywareSpyware
Spyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
because browser HTTP cookie
HTTP cookie
A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...
s are set to track users as they travel from website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
to website and record which commercial advertisements they view and select while browsing. DoubleClick is considered to be malware by several commercial organizations (Adaware, Symantec
Symantec
Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
, Spybot
Spybot
Spybot can refer to:*Spybot worm, a group of malware*Spybot – Search & Destroy, an anti-spyware program...
) which detect it and provide the tools to block/remove it.
DoubleClick has also been criticized for misleading users by offering an opt-out option that is insufficiently effective. According to a San Francisco IT consulting group, although the opt-out option affects cookies, DoubleClick does not allow users to opt out of IP address-based tracking.
DoubleClick with MSN were shown serving malware via drive-by download exploits by a group of attackers for some time in December 2010.
Products
DoubleClick offers technology products and services that are sold primarily to advertising agencies and mediaMass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
companies to allow clients to traffic, target, deliver, and report on their interactive advertising
Interactive advertising
Interactive advertising uses online or offline interactive media to communicate with consumers and to promote products, brands, services, and public service announcements, corporate or political groups....
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 (DART for Advertisers, or DFA) and the management of ad inventory for publishers (DART for Publishers, or DFP). 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. Unlike the DFA and DFP products which are both Software as a Service SaaS
Saas
SAAS is an abbreviation for* Social Accountability Accreditation Services* Software as a service * Student Awards Agency for Scotland* Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences* South Australian Ambulance Service...
products, DART Enterprise is a standalone product running on Linux.
In 2004 DoubleClick acquired Performics
Performics
Performics is a performance marketing agency that provides paid search, natural search, social, display, affiliate and mobile marketing solutions to a variety of Fortune 500 and smaller clients...
. Performics offers affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts...
, search engine optimization
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results...
, and search engine marketing
Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing, , is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion...
solutions. The marketing solutions were integrated into the core DART system and rebranded DART search.
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
Stock exchange
A stock exchange is an entity that provides services for stock brokers and traders to trade stocks, bonds, and other securities. Stock exchanges also provide facilities for issue and redemption of securities and other financial instruments, and capital events including the payment of income and...
.
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 cookiesHTTP cookie
A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...
on their machines. Some of the types of information collected are:
- Web browserWeb browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
- Operating SystemOperating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
- ISPInternet service providerAn Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
- BandwidthBandwidth (computing)In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...
- Time of day
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
Frequency capping
Frequency capping is a term in advertising that means restricting the number of times a specific visitor to a website is shown a particular advertisement...
".