As seen on Adrants. Google is to buy Doubleclick for $3.1 Billion. Twice what they paid for Youtube and their biggest acquisition yet.

This gives Google instant access to display advertising and with the recent Tangozebra acquisition means they now have a direct competitor to Eyeblaster, Pointroll and the other rich banner serving solutions. We'll see how this affects the industry in the next 12 months.

Also in a round-a-bout way this site is now sponsored by a Google company.

• Making up for lost ad revenue
• Getting back @ Google for the deal falling through
• An attempt to make their partnership with Joost seem more legitimate
• A frustrated lashing out of old line media at a the fact that they no longer control the distribution of content once it is released
• All of the Above

Da Bitch from Ad-Rag/Commercial Archive has posted her experience with a banner that took over her browser and made her install a program. Pretty scary.

I've had a similar experience when on Mypace with ads getting around the popup blockers installed. These type of ads should be policed better, especially if they are running through ad networks and not just rouge websites.

LONDON, March 1st, 2007 - DoubleClick Inc., a leading provider of digital advertising technology and services, today announced that it has acquired 100 per cent of Tangozebra, a pioneer in the rich media industry and a leading digital marketing technology provider in Europe for advertisers and publishers. This acquisition underscores DoubleClick’s commitment to providing leading technology and best in class service on a global basis to the fast-growing rich media market.

You can download the full press release here.

This continues 2007 as being the year of mergers and aquisitions. Australia has recently seen alot of activity in the online space, Blue Freeway and C4 being off the top of my head and it will continue as companies capitalise on the strength of the online sector.

Beuraucracy is a funny thing. It's a little like testing medicines - some may know they work for most - but "officially" we all have to wait until the "official" precentages are right.

Anyway - this little announcement has a few people excited in the UK, now we can run standard IAB sizes at 30k (I'm assuming for all formats) - to add that litlte bit extra in the execution.

Now I'm not sure about the rest of you but I've been publishing 30k files across all formats, most of the time for the last 2+ years (there are some exceptions - like yahoo and a handful of fringe or multiple site buy bookings for planners looking to get home before 6, and, excel formula wizard types who tell you that the targeted campaing is in fact he same site structure they've been presenting for the last 7 years [since 1999 according to this]) - of course.

Lets not even start with "standard" or polite options in regards to video (600k+ minimum, easy). Without interaction.

And I honestly can't remember when I was told no to even 31.6k - because it saved the flash guys 3 days (thats 1 k per day) in specialist compression reduction techniques to target my "unofficial" 30k limit. Hell you can even save some bytes if you add up the bytes: 1 KB (one KiloByte) = 1,024 Bytes - thats 24 extra bytes per 1000 if your good with the lingo - also you've got some flexibilty with the Block allocation when you view the size in lsit form on your PC/mac.

Kids, don't always believe what you hear from the buyers/planners - they like to keep it very very simple - they are flexible, and they will move - and may even dance if you ask them with the right tone of conviction and passion.

Sure 30k is good news, but now we should be aiming for 50k "unofficially".

From little things big things grow.