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Flush with cash and possessing a highly touted stock, DoubleClick Inc. is moving aggressively to dominate the Internet advertising business.
Last week, it agreed to buy its biggest competitor, NetGravity Inc., for $527 million, and DoubleClick says it is working its way down a list of 100 companies it is considering buying.
"We made the strategic decision that we wanted to be the leader in every segment and that we wanted our technology to be the industry standard," says Jeff Epstein, executive vice president for mergers and acquisitions.
The NetGravity acquisition is DoubleClick's second in four weeks. Last month, the company said it would pay $ 1 billion for Abacus Direct Corp., a Colorado data base company that collects information on catalog purchases.
The strategy has catapulted DoubleClick ahead of its competition. If its plan succeeds, DoubleClick's technology would be the delivery system for a substantial chunk of the ads that pop up on the Web, a service for which it would pocket millions in licensing and other fees.
First, however, the purchase of Abacus must overcome opposition from consumer advocates who fear invasion of buyers' privacy. DoubleClick must also broaden its revenue base, since 43% of its revenues are derived from a single Web client, Internet portal AltaVista. Like most other new media companies, the firm has yet to...