IAC Leaves DoubleClick for Atlas

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IAC Advertising Solutions has switched ad servers, abandoning DoubleClick in favor of aQuantive's Atlas.

The ad sales division of IAC/InterActiveCorp said its goal in making the move was to consolidate IAC's myriad Web properties into a single media ad serving platform using the latest available technology. It said the move to Atlas will allow it to offer advertisers better access to more than 60 million unique IAC users each month, a June audience figure reported by comScore Media Metrix.

IAC owns Ask, Excite, Expedia, Hotwire, iWon, Live Daily, Match Ticketmaster, TicketWeb, Match.com, Citysearch and Evite. It characterizes its audience as "busy mothers, trendy singles, established professionals, tech-savvy consumers and affluent couples."

The deal is a big win for Atlas and for Microsoft, which anticipates completing its acquisition of aQuantive by the end of the year.

"The relationship with IAC is a fairly comprehensive partnership that is, in essence, designed to take advantage of the Atlas Ad Manager technology for IAC publisher sites and manage the full spectrum of their business online in terms of inventory forecasting, analytics, targeting, etc.," said Scott Ferris, Atlas's senior vice president and general manager of the publisher and emerging media divisions. "It's designed to encompass all of the IAC publisher and media property over time."

It's also a blow to DoubleClick and its likely future parent Google, though Google's move to buy DoubleClick was not a factor in IAC's decision. An IAC spokesperson said the deal has been in the works for a long time, pre-dating the merger agreement between Google and DoubleClick.

IAC said Ad Manager will give advertisers more choice in "how, where and when they target IAC users," noting IAC wants to give advertisers better ability to access emerging formats such as in-stream video and mobile.

Terms of the multi-year deal were not disclosed. Atlas has offices in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Denver, Raleigh and London.