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Microsoft sells Razorfish for $530 million

by Scott Bicheno on 10 August 2009, 09:49

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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Increased focus

Microsoft continues to refine its strategy for the online advertising market. It had sold Razorfish, the digital marketing agency that it acquired when it bought online ad agency aQuantive for $6 billion in 2007, to French advertising group Publicis for $530 million.

Razorfish has over 2,000 employees and, as well as doing the ad campaign for Bing, has also worked for Microsoft rivals. It's thought this sale is designed to help Microsoft focus on the core objective of increasing its share of the online advertising market, but there must also been the danger of a conflict of interest given that Razorfish is responsible for a lot of online media buying.

The remainder of what was formerly aQuantive still exists as Microsoft Advertising, and this move signifies a further statement of intent from Microsoft after the recently announced Yahoo! search deal. Microsoft now also owns three percent of Publicis.

"When we complete this transaction, approximately a quarter of our annual revenues will come from digital communications, and we believe we have more capacity to grow with new clients," said Maurice Lévy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe.

"Equally important, we are very pleased that as a consequence of this transaction, we are building upon the strategic relationship with Microsoft that we announced in June to explore ways to work together to help deliver innovative on-line solutions to a broad spectrum of brand marketers."

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, added: "We look forward to continuing to work with Razorfish as one of our agencies, and we're confident that as a part of Publicis Groupe, Razorfish will build on its success to date in the digital advertising industry."

 



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