Yahoo's $270 million swoop 'pushes back speculation of a sale'
Yahoo, awash for the past few weeks with rumours of a sale, announced today that it has agreed to acquire the ad network and technology company Interclick for $270 million - hopefully enabling it to get a better return from its ads.
Yahoo's big buy
Insiders also believe that the move, Yahoo's biggest buy since 2007, kicks further down the road the possibility of a complete sale of the company.
Yahoo will pay $9 a share for Interclick, 22% up on its closing price of $7.40 on Monday.
The Interclick technology aims to help marketers better target and optimise their ad buys. Recently Yahoo interim CEO Tim Morse said the company needed to make
improvements to the performance on its non-guaranteed ad selling.
The Wall Street Journal said the acquisition was "meant to help solve what has been a chronic problem for Yahoo: digital-ad sellers buying up ad space on Yahoo websites and selling it to advertisers for a much higher price." Yahoo was said by industry experts to have been "losing out on tens of millions of dollars in revenue a year or more."
The deal comes as Yahoo also continues to explore an ad-selling partnership with Microsoft and AOL .
Vice president Ross Levinsohn said that the Interclick buy," underscores our focus on enhancing the performance of both our guaranteed and non-guaranteed display business across Yahoo and our partner sites ."
The deal is expected to close by early next year