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Doubleclick is an online advertising company that operates in the internet banner, pop-up and e-mail advertising business (Charters, 2002). Doubleclick have had amazing growth since it was started in 1996. It has gone from a gross profit of 2734 000 in 1996 to a gross profit of 228 250 000 in 2001. (Jellassi and Enders, 2005, p434)
DoubleClick was started by Kevin O’Connor and Dwight Merriman in 1996 (Jellassi and Enders, 2005, p434). The two were convinced that they could capitalize and make big money by internet advertising. One key reason for DoubleClick’s big success is that is very early based its online advertising on advertising network (Jellassi and Enders, 2005, p437). DoubleClick created a collection of websites, thereby small websites were able to compete with the big companies like AOL and Yahoo for the big advertising dollars, by giving a big audience by being in a network. By developing of the online advertising network the technology DART were made. Before technologies like DoubleClick’s DART internet advertiser had no way of knowing which advertisement was seen by whom, how often, or most importantly if their viewers were in the target audience (Jellassi and Enders, 2005, p.435). By providing the advertisers with information about their viewer it gave DoubleClick a big advantage.
DoubleClick is divided into two main section; direct marketing and online advertising. The direct marketing division is then again divided into two sections the first which is abacus which include merchant/business services data enhancement and channel-view. The other section is e-Mail this include; DARTMail full service, DARTMail for publishers and marketers, DARTMail software and e-mail list services broker and rental.
The online advertising section is divided into; ad management and media. The ad management section includes; DART for publishers, adserver software, DART for advertisers and DART for advertiser’s tool set. The media section includes publisher networks in North America, Japan and Asia. (Jellassi and Enders, 2005, p440)
DART: DoubleClick DART is an ad serving technology that performs the targeting, reporting and inventory management for the sites in the DoubleClick Network (Privacy Power!, 2000).
DoubleClick’s DART technology made it for the first time in history possible for online advertisers pinpoint their ads to reach a specific audience segments (Jellassi and Enders, 2005, p436). This new technology was a reason for DoubleClick’s fast success and is seen as one of their competitive advantage.
The DART technology is able to segment and target the user based on the following criteria’s:
Table: source: (Privacy Power!, 2000)
The DoubleClick DART technology is easy to use, and generally does not require any hardware or software to be installed. (Privacy Power!, 2000) Is is usually enough with a short HTML code to instruct the browser to request a targeted ad from DoubleClick ad-server.
To be able to target the specific market segments or geographical location DART uses cookie technology. (DoubleClick, 2005)Some critics like Charters (2002) argue that by using this cookie technology they invade people’s privacy. Charter claims among other factors that the cookie technology clearly violates people’s privacy by usually obtain people’s personal information without their knowledge for economical reasons.
Charters, D. (2002) “Electronic monitoring and privacy issues in business-marketing: The ethics of the DoubleClick experience�? Journal of Business Ethics, vol 35, no 4, pp. 243-255.
DoubleClick INC (2005) “Cookies,�? Retrieved September 27, 2005 from http://www.doubleclick.com/us/about_doubleclick/privacy/cookies.asp
Jelassi, T. and Enders, A. (2005) Strategies for e-business : creating value through electronic and mobile commerce : concept and cases, Harlow, England : Financial Times/Prentice Hall
Privacy Power! (2000) “DoubleClick DART,�? Retrieved October 3, 2005 from http://www.accs-net.com/smallfish/doubleclk02.htm
Privacy Power! (2000) “DoubleClick Network,�? Retrieved October 2, 2005 from http://www.accs-net.com/smallfish/doubleclk01.htm
Jorgen Ingwersen 15:04, 27 Oct 2005 (EST)
