Yahoo is purchasing ad network and technology company Interclick for $270 million.
The all-cash deal will see Yahoo pay $9 a share for Interclick, a 22% premium on its closing price of $7.40 in Monday trading. Interclick’s technology aims to help marketers better target and optimize their ad buys.
The deal comes as Yahoo continues to explore an ad-selling partnership with Microsoft and AOL to pool and sell each other’s remnant ad inventory in a separate marketplace in an attempt to raise prices for ad inventory they cannot sell directly. Those talks continue and are partly being pushed by agency holding companies that would like an easier way to buy so-called “premium” ad inventory, according to execs briefed on the talks.
In Yahoo’s most recent earnings call, interim CEO Tim Morse, said the company needed to make improvements to the performance on its non-guaranteed ad selling. In theory, Interclick’s technology should help.
“This investment underscores our focus on enhancing the performance of both our guaranteed and non-guaranteed display business across Yahoo and our partner sites and, combined with Yahoo’s reach and advertising leadership, will deliver a powerful solution for marketers,” Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo’s EVP-Americas, said in a statement.
The deal is expected to close by early next year.
To read the original article in Advertising Age, click here.
