• Ad Age, Wednesday, April 25, 2007 11 AM

Ad agency execs weighed in on the Google-DoubleClick merger. Rick Corteville, executive director-media of Organic San Francisco, was, per the trade mag, "practically salivating at the thought of being able to see reports for search, display and rich-media banners, and any click-based media vehicles all in one place." Sounds swell, right? It should be noted that there will be severe limits on merging the companies' data, according to a DoubleClick filing with the FTC, which came in response to privacy concerns flagged by the Electronic Privacy Information Center earlier in the week.

Corteville's wish list included that kind of integrated reporting in addition to a wider variety of rich media formats for AdSense and more precise information about the merits of search as a branding vehicle. Sarah Fay, the president of Aegis Group's Isobar U.S., agrees that the ad world needs to accept that "co-opetition" is the way of the future.

"In a way, now that DoubleClick has landed, a lot of agencies can heave a sigh of relief," Fay said. "It could have been picked up by an agency-holding company, and then there really would have been competitive issues..." Well, for advertisers anyway. That situation is not dissimilar to the issues facing aQuantive, which owns the ad shop AvenueA/Razorfish and the ad-server Atlas DMT.

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