• by Masha Geller , May 6, 2002

Two interesting acquisitions to talk about today. The first involved DoubleClick and Nielsen//NetRatings, the second – Unicast and Enliven.

As announced earlier this morning, Nielsen//NetRatings has bought DoubleClick's @plan products for $18.5 million in cash and stock. @plan is the syndicated survey-based audience measurement tool for online media planning, buying and selling.

After the failed merger with Jupiter Media Metrix, NetRatings is obviously on a quest to position itself as the global standard in web media and market research and this acquisition certainly helps. Just recently, NetRatings bought JMM’s AdRelevance web analytics division and this acquisition of @plan brings a fairly extensive array of user lifestyle, demographic and attitudinal information under one roof (which should make advertisers’ lives considerably easier).

The deal is more that a straight sale, however. Under the terms of the agreement, Nielsen//NetRatings and @plan research will be integrated back into DoubleClick's DART and MediaVisor products.

The second acquisition of the day is also noteworthy. Unicast, the developer of the Superstitial, has acquired faltering rival Enliven Inc., in hopes of giving Unicast advertisers a better tool for managing and measuring their Superstitial campaigns. Financial details were not disclosed.

In the transition period, Unicast said they will provide complete support for existing Enliven campaigns, ensuring that contracted campaigns run to completion.

Both deals have already raised some stifled “consolidation kills competition” concerns, but I don’t think that’s worth worrying about. Just think of the potential benefits of having fewer cooks in the kitchen of online ad standards.