Facebook Atlas purchase – commentary
Microsoft acquired Atlas as part of its $6.3 billion cash acquisition of aQuantive so it’s impossible to know how much of that $6 billion value they attributed to Atlas at that time. Comments on the deal on the sector from Julie Langley, managing director, technology and digital media practice, Results International
However the deal was a flop for them and in 2012, Microsoft took a $6.2 billion write-down mostly in relation to the aQuantive deal.
Microsoft acquired aQuantive just a couple of months after Google announced its acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1billion.
Microsoft had been trying to sell Atlas for some time but other potential buyers came to the conclusion, we think, that the technology has been under invested in and has been left behind in terms of its tracking and attribution capabilities.
But that probably doesn’t matter to Facebook.
The purchase price hasn’t been reported but was rumoured to be around the $100 million mark – if that’s the case, its small change if it can make even a small impact on Facebook’s display advertising revenue. And to put $100 million into context Facebook had just shy of $10 billion of cash at end December