Only six months in, 2008 has already seen aborted mergers, an executive exodus and Yahoo's death rattle. Take a look at the biggest interactive marketing stories and how they will affect the rest of the year.
It seems like just yesterday we were wondering if old technology systems were going to come to a screeching halt as the clocks and calendars went from 23:59:59, 12/31/99 to 00:00:00, 01/01/00, leaving global populations without electricity, airplanes or working alarm clocks.
It's hard to believe that we're now halfway through the year 2008.
With the world moving faster and faster and change coming upon us more suddenly and completely than it used to, the typical industry year-in-review no longer seems adequate. With so much happening, and so many news sources reporting on these events on an ongoing basis, it's now necessary to take a look back at the year when it is only six months old. We've got to remind ourselves about what's been happening in the last few months, or risk forgetting about what was the most important thing just a few weeks ago.
A number of developments in the digital advertising space seem worth revisiting, now that the incessant wash of the new has so quickly eroded the impact of the old -- even if old is only old by a few months.
Funny thing is, if you take a look back at what really were the biggest news stories in our industry in the past six months, there's only one character that is constant: Yahoo. Of the six stories and trends I felt deserved a second look, three and a half of them relate to Yahoo. While I suppose some of those could be collapsed into a single subject, they each represent something different -- something about what's been going on in our business and what we might have to look forward to
So, what has been going on in our business? Let's get started.
1. Microsoft's unsolicited takeover bid for Yahoo.
This was probably the biggest story in the online advertising space over the last six months. Although talk has faded to the background thanks to Yahoo's new relationship with its biggest rival, Google (number 3 on the list), the failed Microsoft/Yahoo merger was 2008's first and biggest merger and acquisition story, breaking Feb. 1.
Microsoft's $44.6 billion cash and stock offer was 62 percent higher than Yahoo's stock price at the end of the last day of January. The announcement, naturally, brought Yahoo's stock price up.
Yahoo spurned the offer, and management -- or at least the management that matters --said the $31 price-per-share offered was too low: a slap in the face, an ellipses rather than an exclamation point. Prodigal CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang and his president, Susan Decker, felt the company was undervalued and claimed that a share price in the neighborhood of $37 was more reflective of the company's real worth.
After AOL and Yahoo reportedly talked about a marriage of equals in April (number 2 on our list), Microsoft came back with a $33 price-per-share offer for Yahoo. But the yodeling icon's management again rebuffed the offer, insisting that the company was worth at least $35 per share.
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