aQuantive joins OSG

In case you weren’t paying attention, Microsoft announced last Friday the $6B acquisition of aQuantive, a full-service digital advertising company comprised of Avenue A |Razorfish (ad agency), Atlas (ad tracking), and DRIVEpm (ad publishing). Some great articles on the deal here and here.

From the Seattle Times:

As all media become digital, the boundaries between different types of marketing are disappearing. That’s creating an enormous market with hundreds of billions of dollars in possible profit, he said.

“What’s happening is that the biggest market in the history of the Earth is in the process of being formed,” he said. “Being a big player in it is both likely to be highly lucrative and the only way to participate.”

As part of OSG (Online Services Group), it’s “super exciting” (an over-used term from the internal announcement of the aQuantive deal) to see deals like this happening around us. Between this, the Silverlight release, the stellar numbers SharePoint is putting up, and the releases of Vista and Office 2007, it sure is an exciting time to be part of Microsoft.