AOL's Playing A Pretty Nice Hand
I really like the hand AOL is playing in the Internet display advertising business. And the card they just pulled (TACODA) is going to really strengthen their hand.
Brad has his take on the TACODA transaction on the Union Square Ventures blog. Brad and Dave Morgan started TACODA several years before we started Union Square Ventures and TACODA had a lot to do with why we started the partnership and how we think about investing. So it's a great outcome for us, Dave, Curt, and the entire company. But Brad says all that in his post. So please give it a read.
Congrats on another exit!
Posted by: Fraser | July 24, 2007 at 10:08 AM
Indeed, congrats. Hell of a year... Love the story re: Dave Morgan in the elevator on the USV blog.
I think that this could be like Advertising.com and add value over time to AOL. But as much as think BT makes sense, it does not make sense for an AOL to partner with a third party entity, so buying it and keeping all that data in-house makes more sense. And since YHOO launched SmartAds, there were few bidders.
I am a bit suspicious of the forecasts:
$350M today to $3.8B by 2011? That's 10x growth! Even video which gets everyone excited is set to grow 6x in that time span.
Maybe that's why Tacoda sold for $200M while RightMedia, TSFM, DCLK and AQNT sold for what they did...
Anyway, covered this more: here:http://www.watchmojo.com/web/blog/?p=1890
And again, congrats...
Posted by: ashkan karbasfrooshan | July 24, 2007 at 11:04 AM
A VC is one of my favorite blogs, but the bling has become a bit too much. It's taking this bad boy consistently over 30 seconds to load.
Posted by: Lance Weatherby | July 24, 2007 at 11:13 AM
nice.
it's a bubble though :)
Posted by: howard Lindzon | July 24, 2007 at 11:44 AM
Love reading this type of post! You guys have the best job!
Posted by: Jill | July 25, 2007 at 09:37 AM
This bubble's IPO seems to be selling to one of the big guys.
(not that there's anything wrong with it!)
Posted by: rick | July 26, 2007 at 08:34 PM