The Media Supermarket

Another whopping announcement by the (search?/advertising?) giant. They are firing toward more and more enriching partnerships and innovations in newer fields of advertising.
They are now beta-testing their radio advertising, which is supposed to be powered by better reporting capabilities for advertisers. At the same time, they are also testing their cost-per-action advertising model.
Now, they are partnering with Doubleclick, which has on of the most extensive databases of online advertisers, and very powerful targeting and reporting tools and metrics. They were even pressured after partnering with Abacus Direct for fears of abusing their combined data.
The main theme in Google’s announcement, was the integration of search and display advertising. Doubleclick seems to be the master of banners and the more visual ads, and as we know Google mastered what they pioneered, which is mainly search, and eventually contextual advertising.
This move is supposed to prove useful for advertisers who will have access to better performance measures, and improved tools to manage their campaigns. Publishers will probably have more variety and relevance in the advertising options available for them.
A fast webcast was made today where the top executives of both companies summarized their decisions, and answered some questions.
Although the deal was signed, the total integration and finalization is supposed to take place by the end of this year. Partly, due to some regulatory reasons, and making sure they comply with all antitrust laws and regulations, which is not yet final by the way.
Google was not the only bidder for this company, and some other giants were also bidding, actually the giants, according to Slashdot. Yahoo! and Microsoft were the main players, but Google seems to be the coming undisputed giant of all forms of advertising, since these two lag way behind Google in their search and advertising programs.
Asked why this was the timing for the deal, and not before, Eric Schmidt CEO of Google said that they simply underestimated the size of the display ad business, and realized the great opportunities it promised.
By the way, this is the highest amount that Google paid for a company, and they paid in cold hard cash, $3.1 Billion!

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