Most importantly for shareholders, AOL has suddenly
transformed from a dead weight to a driving force for Time Warner's stock price, which suffered ever since AOL's disastrous acquisition of the giant media firm in 2000.
The acquisition of Swedish firm TradeDoubler, a giant of Web advertising in Europe, closely mirrors that of Advertising.com two years ago. TradeDoubler's specialty is matching direct marketers to Web publishers whose audience might be interested in their products in exchange for a cut of sales. AOL is set to purchase the company for $900 million in cash--about twice what it paid for Advertising.com (That's Web inflation, for you). It hopes for a similar success.