DOUBLE CLICK ACQUISITION BY GOOGLE COULD HAVE ONLINE GAMBLING IMPACT

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Will Google's anti-online gambling adverts policy extend to its latest acquisition?

This week's massive $3.1 billion Google deal, in which the company acquired online advertising company Double Click for almost double what it paid for the fee video enterprise YouTube last year, could impact the online gambling industry say marketers.

Why? Double Click is arguably the biggest online advertising display server in the business...certainly one of the largest if not the leader. With Google's anti-online gambling advertising policy, marketers fear that this will be extended to embrace Double Click.... and that could make for tougher advert presentation.

According to advertising sources, Google now owns Double Click's presentation assets and will clearly be more influential in relationships with advertising companies, web publishers and of course the advertisers themselves. And Google is likely to want to make its presence felt in the display advertisement sector it has so long wanted to enter, where Double Click is dominant. The addition of display advert clout to Google's already strong position in search and contextual advertising makes for an impressive combination.

Founded in 1996 and previously owned by two private equity groups, DoubleClick provides display advertisements on Web sites like MySpace, The Wall Street Journal and America Online together with software to extract the best revenues from the material. The company also helps advertising buyers such as marketers and their agencies to manage and track how much business their rich media, search and other online endeavours produce.

DoubleClick recently introduced a "stock exchange" for online advertisements that analysts claim will have been attractive to Google in the run-up to the acquisition.