Online Advertising Innovations & The Illusion of Anonymity

DoubleClick, Incorporated the birth of a company Created in January 1996 by Kevin O’Conner (now 42 and Chairman) Started with the help of interactive advertising leader, Poppe Tyson [2] $2mil in seed money from Poppe Tyson’s parent company, Bozell Jacobs [2]

What does DoubleClick do? official purpose statement “We are a leading provider of products and services used by direct marketers, Web publishers and advertisers to plan, execute and analyze their marketing programs. Combining marketing technology and data expertise, our products and services help our customers optimize their advertising and marketing campaigns online and through direct mail. “ [3]

E-Ads Innovation the DoubleClick Network First advertising network on the Internet – now over 1,500 high-traffic sites [2] B2B model, no physical products – they don’t create, market, or sell content, but rather just the 1s and 0s of ads (and provide related services) [1,4]

Stiff Competition innovating to stand out Lots of competitors: ValueClick, Engage, Google, Yahoo!, 24/7, FlyCast, Unicast, Eyeblaster, aQuantive [2,5] DoubleClick’s edge: array of services, building up widespread network, and acquisition of consumer information [2,3,5]

DART: Dynamic, Advertising, Reporting and Targeting DART uses cookies to monitor activity Info recorded in databases of users’ personal preferences (user profiling) DART is now the industry standard for managing online advertising [2] – example of DoubleClick innovation

Rapid Success record-setting growth Entered a nascent market in online ads and providing related services – tracking “click-throughs”, targeting ads to specific areas of interest… Feb. ’96 – predict they will hit 10 million unique users by mid-Sept. (succeeded six weeks ahead of schedule) [6]

Mergers and Growth DoubleClick buys up the market The company has acquired about 20 companies to date Key acquisition – Abacus [2,7] Abacus: consumer information database for over 90 million U.S. households Link online and offline consumer data?

“I Will Not Be Targeted!” privacy vs. personalization Center for Democracy & Technology launches a “websit” in 2000 to protest DoubleClick’s invasion of privacy [9]

Making amends online public education campaign “Internet Privacy Education Campaign” Option to opt-out of DoubleClick Effort by company puts out over 100 million ad impressions, sends over 150,000 unique visitors to web site [10]

Privacy fears subside business as usual Privacy advocates declare victory Main casualty – O’Conner steps down as CEO, assumes Chairman position [2] Stock ~$135 before outcry, rebounds to ~$95 after issue settled [11] More privacy issues on horizon as the company tries to expand online ads…

When Web Bugs Attack transparent gifs “Online ad company DoubleClick, for example, used Web bugs that could communicate with cookies from its Web site. The cookies then revealed past online behavior, even home addresses, IP addresses, and phone numbers to the bugs, and the bugs sent that information straight back to DoubleClick.” [12]

Ingenious or Fraudulent? a new class-action lawsuit Latest controversy – fraudulent ads Ads that appear to be system warnings or error messages – entire surface is actually a hyperlink to another web site Users confused and fooled into clicking [13]

eBay tie-in a sizable ad agreement Global, multi-year deal for DoubleClick Adding new features to eBay – “bid-per- click” keyword advertising Will enhance efficiency of eBay’s online advertising programs [14]

DART Motif rich media advertising A new area of online advertising that already accounts for over 25% of all online ads [15] Partnership with Macromedia to capture rich media ad market – new product is DART Motif (using Flash) [15] Innovation again – ease & speed of use

And in conclusion… DoubleClick’s future is stable Recent profitability suggests that the company is here to stay [16] Shift from selling a technology to providing a service ensures market share now and in the future – advantage over diverse field of competitors

References [01] doubleclick.com [02] jobcircle.com [03] cbs.marketwatch.com [04] Toronto Star [lexis-nexis] [05] channelseven.com [06] DoubleClick Press Release [lexis-nexis] [07] news.com.com [09] ecommercetimes.com [10] Business Wire [lexis-nexis] [11] wired.com [12] cnet.com [13] ferencelaw.com [14] DoubleClick Press Release [lexis-nexis] [15] internetnews.com [16] internetnews.com