As VP of Ad Sales for a mid-sized online publisher from 2000-05, I had the opportunity of working with every single vendor in the industry, and let me tell you Dart for Publishers (DFP) was no joy to work with. Don’t get me wrong, even aQuantive’s AtlasDMT (a stock I own) is clunky… but Doubleclick’s DFP was just horrible. I always figured advertisers really loved its advertising platform. I never understood why publishers used it, frankly.
I was hoping Google could build something simple and elegant, but now we’ll get Doogle, or Googlick… of course, if they manage to turn DCLK into Analytics (what they did with Urchin), I’d be happy.
But that is all secondary to the number of publishers that are about to check their contracts to see how quickly they can get out of the DCLK contract. And I’ve already addressed the number of advertisers who probably don’t want to work with a Google-owned ad server here. Just think of how eBay’s marketplace flopped. Sure, that was in TV, but who do you think Google is trying to win over with this deal? The major advertisers, who already fear Google’s ambition.
“I use DFP Reports daily to run the business. The ability to get detailed information on our ad operations has helped us to maximize our selling efforts and keep our advertisers happy.”
Matthew Goldstien, Vice President of Ad Sales Operations, MTV Networks
Taken from Doubleclick’s website. I really wonder how much longer Viacom’s MTV - the same Viacom who is suing Google for $1B - will be using Doubleclick’s (now Google’s) Dart for Publishers.
I am hoping the Monte Carlo guys took this into consideration before they paid $3B in cash for DCLK.
Which begs the question: why cash? What does that say?
I love this industry…
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April 13th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
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