• by Paul Gough , October 16, 2003

A rise in marketing spending gave DoubleClick a boost in the third quarter, and the New York-based firm projected even more for 2004.

Revenue rose to $74.8 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to $63.5 million in the second quarter and $74.6 million in the third quarter of 2002. That's despite $8.2 million in charges related to relocation of offices in San Francisco and New York. Net income rose to $6.3 million for the interactive ad and technology company. DoubleClick reported $5.8 million in net income last quarer but had posted a $61.9 million loss in the third quarter last year.

The company got good results from DoubleClick Data, which increased 16.7 percent to $31.3 million in the third quarter over the same period a year ago. Revenue from Abacus rose 7.3 percent over the third quarter of 2002 to $28.8 million.

But the TechSolutions division reported lower revenues in the third quarter, from $43.5 million in 2002 to $45.1 million in 2003. Ad management products, which are another large chunk of the company's revenues, had third-quarter revenues of $31 million compared to $35.4 million a year ago. DART for Advertisers and DART for Publishers saw quarter-to-quarter and year-over-year increases because of new business signings.

Email management and delivery revenues were down slightly to $9.6 million from $9.7 in the third quarter a year ago, a development DoubleClick attributed to shifts in e-mail marketing related to increased concerns by marketers over spam.

Ensemble and SiteAdvance, both multichannel marketing automation and analytics products, had revenues of $2.9 million up 80 percent from the second quarter of 2003.

DoubleClick expects between $69 million and $71 million in revenues the fourth quarter. Chief Executive Officer Kevin Ryan said the company was well positioned for growth in 2004 but that it would be a few months before budgets were finalized. He said that the company's new products in rich media, called DART Motif, will be released early next year. He said that the business is in the $40 million to $45 million range with growth of 15 percent to 20 percent a year.

"So this opens up the market for another $40 or $50 million in revenue, which is encouraging. Come January, we hope we can tell you that we're going to get a big piece of that," Ryan said.