• L.A. Times, Monday, October 8, 2007 11:30 AM

The major portals, sensing that the fragmentation of Web content consumption is an irreversible trend, have all moved aggressively into the business of online ad-serving. In fact, AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Google have collectively spent more than $10 billion on such companies this year to help expand their online networks. If you can't beat 'em, you might as well grab a cut of their ad revenue.

Instead of spending more money to create stickier content, the Internet majors plan on becoming a one-stop shop for advertisers. The networks they have purchased (with the exception of Google-DoubleClick and AOL-Tacoda) mostly feed ads to small Web sites. But that will change as they expand them. "We're not interested in building yesterday's portal," says AOL President and COO Ron Grant. "Consumers are finding what they are looking for is coming from more and more fragmented places. We need a way for advertisers to take advantage of that fragmentation."

Indeed, the writing is on the wall. The Internet majors may have grown their audiences over the last year--but Yahoo and AOL, for instance, saw time spent at their sites decrease about 10 percent, says comScore. But that's why AOL bought Tacoda, Microsoft bought aQuantive, Yahoo bought Right Media and Google wants to buy DoubleClick: so they can make money from the spread of ad dollars to sites like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NBC and many of the Web's major blogs.

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