8 ms·

I was part of aQuantive on the Avenue A | Razorfish side and was there for about 2 years leading up to the MSFT acquisition and was also part of another MSFT ac

I was part of aQuantive on the Avenue A | Razorfish side and was there for about 2 years leading up to the MSFT acquisition and was also part of another MSFT acquisition (Farecast) so I want to provide some context/opinion on where the business was at it when it was purchased. - The Atlas ad serving platform and related ad exchange platform was one of the top ad systems alongside DART, Valueclick, and others. There was also a steady stream of new leads to Atlas as the agency side acquired new clients. I think the opportunity that was missed was to tie the MSN search business with the banner/rich media ad serving business and create a single platform to reach and remarket based on search intent. A lot of this is done today but this deal was 5 years ago and would have been more groundbreaking. - The agency side of the business wasn't interesting to Microsoft but at that time, Avenue A | Razorfish was the top digital agency in the US with clients from Expedia to Nike to Best Buy. The team at AA|RF had a direct line to the CMOs and worked in most cases as an extension of the marketing teams for these Fortune 500 companies and MS could have leveraged this team as a focus group and to enroll these clients to test innovative ways to market across a publishing network like MSN (still a top portal property). I don't think this was done and again another opportunity missed. Overall, I just felt that there was the potential for aQuantive to help Microsoft close the ad revenue/platform gap with Google and they missed the boat.

Useful_Idiot 14y ago
Just for an interesting comparison: Top 100 mining companies in the world: You'll note that even BHP only hits ~$200bil. http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page67?oid=95737&sn=Detail http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page67?oid=95... These are companies that fundamentally provide the materials for our societies. Shall we change into energy? ExxonMobil is top, at roughly ~ $300bil http://www.platts.com/Top250Home http://www.platts.com/Top250Home This is a company that powers the modern world. ~ $6 bil for this, $8 bil for Skype, $100 bil for FB is nothing more than Peter-Pan land. aQuant was MS attempting to get Google to move on some issues, and an attempt to monetise chewing the cud. Skype was MS attempting to control P-2-P interfacing - which will probably succeed (and wasn't ever designed to be monetised) FaceBook was attempting to give the proles the same inherent networking architecture that the elites always enjoyed, and the $100bil is a pay-off for reshaping the world Hint: mining & energy deal in reality. Tech stocks deal in 'societal value' [where said value is not value to the consumer, it is value to the code controllers; "if you're not paying for it, you're the product"] and are largely to do with the cost of control. $6 bil in this case means nothing, because MS made billions from nothing. "It's worth a punt". Translation: if you spend $100 bil on liquidity per day, $6 bil is a joke. Remember: Gates has spent $18 billion on "African circumcision to prevent AIDS" already, and the US government spends that in a month on foreign military adventures (both aggressive and passive). ~ It was worth a punt. Google turned out to be aggressively competitive, however (and let's not mention the top three AI specialists who committed suicide in the year Google launched their algos... ok?) Be seeing you.
- cheez 14y ago
  > and let's not mention the top three AI specialists who committed suicide in the year Google launched their algos... ok? What?
  - Useful_Idiot 14y ago
    I'd look into AI specialists who all decided to kill themselves in that "very common" way of putting a bag over their head, wrapping duct tape around their necks and then 'doing an oven' to finish the deal. You know, like those pretty wives of CEOs who commit suicide when their hands & feet are bound? Or ex-Dictators have heart attacks all of a sudden? [And yes, I can cite those ones too for bonus points]. It was very common for a short period of time. And yes: at least one was a kook of huge bullshit; the other two were not. And with tenure, the other two really had no reason to go all in. Especially with their family ties. Additionally, there was a car crash and so on, but these are mere accidents. The hidden history of success is paving the road with the bones of your competitors. This isn't to say Google themselves had anything to do with this evil: it merely... widened the broad spaces for saplings to grow, as the forest does when mature trees fall. In broader terms, one might call it: protecting ones investment. And yes: I can post this with 100% immunity, because the conspiracy police meme will eat this for breakfast (see my above being junked), and nothing I say matters. It was just a sad time in AI research, when a few of the top theorists (and a bullshit artist) off'd themselves. Nice search algos though... nothing ever to do with anyone else's research. Do you your own due diligence: if you want to be a player, know the game (and the real costs).
    - whatusername 14y ago
      [citation needed]
      - Useful_Idiot 14y ago
        HN doesn't disappoint! Down-votes, and no-one can do due diligence. <CTRL+F>Push Singh He was named one of the "IEEE Intelligent Systems 10 to Watch," an award that honors young researchers in artificial intelligence. He planned to take a faculty position at the Media Lab this fall...There has been some public note of the similarity between the suicide of Push and that of another more renegade AI Researcher a couple months earlier, Chris McKinstry http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/ http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/ Bhuwan Singh G The Boston Herald reported that Singh suffocated himself with a yard-waste trash bag. And so on. As I said ~ that whole "killing yourself by applying common garden bags in what in most countries would suggest torture / outside interference" is... rather common in some circles. Blinkers. Wear them! Fear the wider world! Down vote everything outside of your cubicle! (Hilarious ~ no wonder the Angels love this site, so easy) Bonus round: The death of Shacknai’s girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, was determined to be a suicide, Gore told reporters today... Zahau, 32, was found nude, with a rope around her neck and her hands and feet bound, a sheriff’s department official said at the time http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-02/medicis-ceo-shacknai-didn-t-commit-crime-death-was-suicide-sheriff-says.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-02/medicis-ceo-shackna... You're all so cute! Committed to the Homo Sapiens 2.0 meme, with nary an eye at the real world. Delightful! Oh, and I rate the ~15+ downvotes as your votes for blindness & wilful ignorance over enlightenment and ability to do even an iota of original research. Not a single one who did an even cursory search / knew enough about the field to give a "yes-coincidence-but-not-conspiracy" post. :Case proven ~ HN is, indeed, for Useful Idiots. . . . . . Now I've provided a citation or two, does this mean all the Aspies in the room will actually do a bit of research? Doubtful, but there we go. [Citation needed if anyone on HN actually is intelligent enough to do basic research] “"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” ~ How very true, and how easily you're put into hutches here. . Hint: I mentioned three, and only linked to two! Not to mention that whole accident thing. How dangerous AI research can be, when algos rule the world ~ remind me how many young PHD students go into Finance these days? That would be a good place to start one's ruminations! So many random and pointless deaths in the Big Apple.
fungi 14y ago
Razorfish pitched to our marketing department (I was the token tec on the panel). Being a Microsoft appendage was a big negative from my point of view... as was the giant Silverlight logo in their pitch docs. > MS could have leveraged this team as a focus group and to enroll these clients to test innovative ways Don't do that! If we hire you to do work for us and you sucker someone in our org in to some shit like this, we will very quickly question your motives and ultimately the value of our relationship. In the end the the marketing wonks went with the agency with the best creative (again).
- calbear81 14y ago
  I didn't mean you get your clients to try things without telling them. I meant get them into pilot programs to find more incremental places to acquire new customers. In regards to creative, Avenue A | Razorfish was a combination of two distinct skillsets. Avenue A handled media buying which in most cases is more important to the success of a campaign than the creative and the Razorfish part was the "creative" side of the agency that worked on all of the campaign assets, etc. Both sides worked together to ensure that the creative was right for the audience (media).
  - fungi 14y ago
    > you sucker someone in our org in to some shit like this Didn't think they would secretly do that. Ulterior motives of corporate overlords, be they pushing Silverlight or pulling us into a msn search strategy are a recipe for friction. That said i'm not in marketing, not in the US, and we are a small org with limited resources that is perpetually screwed around by agencies, so my views are probably of limited value.
sriramk 14y ago
But wasn't having you guys around at MSFT been a conflict of interest? Would have muddied the waters with other agencies, even if there was a Chinese wall between Razorfish and AdCenter.

Useful_Idiot 14y ago

Just for an interesting comparison: Top 100 mining companies in the world: You'll note that even BHP only hits ~$200bil. http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page67?oid=95737&sn=Detail http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page67?oid=95... These are companies that fundamentally provide the materials for our societies. Shall we change into energy? ExxonMobil is top, at roughly ~ $300bil http://www.platts.com/Top250Home http://www.platts.com/Top250Home This is a company that powers the modern world. ~ $6 bil for this, $8 bil for Skype, $100 bil for FB is nothing more than Peter-Pan land. aQuant was MS attempting to get Google to move on some issues, and an attempt to monetise chewing the cud. Skype was MS attempting to control P-2-P interfacing - which will probably succeed (and wasn't ever designed to be monetised) FaceBook was attempting to give the proles the same inherent networking architecture that the elites always enjoyed, and the $100bil is a pay-off for reshaping the world Hint: mining & energy deal in reality. Tech stocks deal in 'societal value' [where said value is not value to the consumer, it is value to the code controllers; "if you're not paying for it, you're the product"] and are largely to do with the cost of control. $6 bil in this case means nothing, because MS made billions from nothing. "It's worth a punt". Translation: if you spend $100 bil on liquidity per day, $6 bil is a joke. Remember: Gates has spent $18 billion on "African circumcision to prevent AIDS" already, and the US government spends that in a month on foreign military adventures (both aggressive and passive). ~ It was worth a punt. Google turned out to be aggressively competitive, however (and let's not mention the top three AI specialists who committed suicide in the year Google launched their algos... ok?) Be seeing you.

cheez 14y ago
> and let's not mention the top three AI specialists who committed suicide in the year Google launched their algos... ok? What?
- Useful_Idiot 14y ago
  I'd look into AI specialists who all decided to kill themselves in that "very common" way of putting a bag over their head, wrapping duct tape around their necks and then 'doing an oven' to finish the deal. You know, like those pretty wives of CEOs who commit suicide when their hands & feet are bound? Or ex-Dictators have heart attacks all of a sudden? [And yes, I can cite those ones too for bonus points]. It was very common for a short period of time. And yes: at least one was a kook of huge bullshit; the other two were not. And with tenure, the other two really had no reason to go all in. Especially with their family ties. Additionally, there was a car crash and so on, but these are mere accidents. The hidden history of success is paving the road with the bones of your competitors. This isn't to say Google themselves had anything to do with this evil: it merely... widened the broad spaces for saplings to grow, as the forest does when mature trees fall. In broader terms, one might call it: protecting ones investment. And yes: I can post this with 100% immunity, because the conspiracy police meme will eat this for breakfast (see my above being junked), and nothing I say matters. It was just a sad time in AI research, when a few of the top theorists (and a bullshit artist) off'd themselves. Nice search algos though... nothing ever to do with anyone else's research. Do you your own due diligence: if you want to be a player, know the game (and the real costs).
  - whatusername 14y ago
    [citation needed]
    - Useful_Idiot 14y ago
      HN doesn't disappoint! Down-votes, and no-one can do due diligence. <CTRL+F>Push Singh He was named one of the "IEEE Intelligent Systems 10 to Watch," an award that honors young researchers in artificial intelligence. He planned to take a faculty position at the Media Lab this fall...There has been some public note of the similarity between the suicide of Push and that of another more renegade AI Researcher a couple months earlier, Chris McKinstry http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/ http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/ Bhuwan Singh G The Boston Herald reported that Singh suffocated himself with a yard-waste trash bag. And so on. As I said ~ that whole "killing yourself by applying common garden bags in what in most countries would suggest torture / outside interference" is... rather common in some circles. Blinkers. Wear them! Fear the wider world! Down vote everything outside of your cubicle! (Hilarious ~ no wonder the Angels love this site, so easy) Bonus round: The death of Shacknai’s girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, was determined to be a suicide, Gore told reporters today... Zahau, 32, was found nude, with a rope around her neck and her hands and feet bound, a sheriff’s department official said at the time http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-02/medicis-ceo-shacknai-didn-t-commit-crime-death-was-suicide-sheriff-says.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-02/medicis-ceo-shackna... You're all so cute! Committed to the Homo Sapiens 2.0 meme, with nary an eye at the real world. Delightful! Oh, and I rate the ~15+ downvotes as your votes for blindness & wilful ignorance over enlightenment and ability to do even an iota of original research. Not a single one who did an even cursory search / knew enough about the field to give a "yes-coincidence-but-not-conspiracy" post. :Case proven ~ HN is, indeed, for Useful Idiots. . . . . . Now I've provided a citation or two, does this mean all the Aspies in the room will actually do a bit of research? Doubtful, but there we go. [Citation needed if anyone on HN actually is intelligent enough to do basic research] “"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” ~ How very true, and how easily you're put into hutches here. . Hint: I mentioned three, and only linked to two! Not to mention that whole accident thing. How dangerous AI research can be, when algos rule the world ~ remind me how many young PHD students go into Finance these days? That would be a good place to start one's ruminations! So many random and pointless deaths in the Big Apple.

fungi 14y ago

Razorfish pitched to our marketing department (I was the token tec on the panel). Being a Microsoft appendage was a big negative from my point of view... as was the giant Silverlight logo in their pitch docs. > MS could have leveraged this team as a focus group and to enroll these clients to test innovative ways Don't do that! If we hire you to do work for us and you sucker someone in our org in to some shit like this, we will very quickly question your motives and ultimately the value of our relationship. In the end the the marketing wonks went with the agency with the best creative (again).

calbear81 14y ago
I didn't mean you get your clients to try things without telling them. I meant get them into pilot programs to find more incremental places to acquire new customers. In regards to creative, Avenue A | Razorfish was a combination of two distinct skillsets. Avenue A handled media buying which in most cases is more important to the success of a campaign than the creative and the Razorfish part was the "creative" side of the agency that worked on all of the campaign assets, etc. Both sides worked together to ensure that the creative was right for the audience (media).
- fungi 14y ago
  > you sucker someone in our org in to some shit like this Didn't think they would secretly do that. Ulterior motives of corporate overlords, be they pushing Silverlight or pulling us into a msn search strategy are a recipe for friction. That said i'm not in marketing, not in the US, and we are a small org with limited resources that is perpetually screwed around by agencies, so my views are probably of limited value.

sriramk 14y ago

But wasn't having you guys around at MSFT been a conflict of interest? Would have muddied the waters with other agencies, even if there was a Chinese wall between Razorfish and AdCenter.