the PPC Book|Pay Per Click Blog | Long Tail Thoughts in a Short Tail World

Google buys the biggest ad serving network in the world, and along with it pulls in a great CPA network, so Microsoft goes out and buys an analytics firm for 2x the price. If that wasn’t enough, they also got a second rate publishing network. What a deal!

Don’t get me wrong, Atlas One Point would be nice to own, but I would never have paid more than $500 million for it (like I have the money ;)… Maybe $550 million, but that would be with a few beers in me.

Nice job Microsoft!

AQuantive was founded in 1997 by chief strategy officer Michael Galgon and Chairman Nicolas Hanauer. The company forecast in May that it would earn net income of $66 million to $71 million this year, up from $54 million in 2006. Its biggest business is the online ad agency Avenue A/Razorfish, and its most profitable is the Atlas unit that sells software and services to measure and target ad campaigns.

This does not solve Microsoft’s BIGGEST PROBLEM IN THIS MARKET, which is eyeballs, mindshare, consumer activity, query share, whatever you want to call it. Believe me, I’ve run enough campaigns on AdCenter to know that they have nothing.

There are more people picking through my garbage in the alley than there are searching on MSN.

Here’s a screenshot of the new google analytics look and feel. Right now you have a choice to either view in beta, or view the original:

No detailed analysis of this change just yet. I’m just playing around with it now.

First impressions:

The user interface looks as though it’s designed for someone reading from 30 feet away.

The site usage dashboard information is very useful as it makes the most important stats easily accessible.

Here’s an example of my favorite page so far:

Top Entrance Keywords Per Page << how nice is that?

Hurry, check it out!