Microsoft announces $ 6 billion acquisition of aQuantive

Today Microsoft announced it will acquire Seattle based aQuantive, which owns Avenue A | Razorfish - a famous dotcom web agency -, but also Atlas, DRIVEpm, and Accpiter - three firms, which are also active in the marketing optimization area -.

Atlas supplies web site optimization, precision paid search, and campaign managemetn services. DRIVEpm delivers precision online advertising services. And Accipter provides among other things online behavorioal targeting services.

Once again, we see the marketing optimization industry is moving quickly and changing fast. Of course, Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive was triggered by Google's take-over of DoubleClick.