posted on October 4, 2000 06:43:25 AM
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2923144.html
<Fair use>
Online advertising company DoubleClick today said it will acquire NetCreations, an opt-in email marketing service, for $191 million in stock.
The deal adds to DoubleClick's existing email marketing resources. The company now will be able to help Web marketers reach consumers by tapping into NetCreations' database of 15 million email addresses, on top of its own 7 million addresses. DoubleClick handles online advertisements for companies and sells anonymous information about users' surfing habits to help advertisers better target their messages.
/Fair Use
Netcreations is a long-time mainsleaze spammer ... they spam for any company who will hand over a list of emails they acquired by whatever means. they claim ot require opt-in lists from their customers, but it has been decisevily shown that they will spam to scavenged lists.
I saw an announcement elsewhere, actually believed the statement that NC is opt-in, and lamented the fact that one of the rare honorable direct marketers (direct marketing should only be opt-in, IMO) was being bought by what I consider one of the scourges of the Internet, namely DoubleClick.
Hah! Guess I should have checked more sources before believing NC is opt-in only. Fortunately, I have no interest in being flooded with ads, opt-in or not, so I didn't sign up -- but who knows if I was already scavenged by other means.
Either way, though, DC has tripled its list of email addresses from 7 to 22 million. And most people think DC only deals with banner ads....
Browse around ZDII some more, and you'll find DC recently bought another online direct marketer. DC is already one of the biggest, and just keeps reeling in more and more databases to add to its own.
One thing I find interesting is this chart of DC stock vs. the Nasdaq:
DC got hit by three big things in the last nine months: the very negative response to their Abacus plans early this year; the Nasdaq downturn; and the recent concerns over the viability of online advertising. I'd expect more mergers as other online direct marketers also lose value and become vulnerable to take-overs.
If this continues, fewer companies will be in charge of larger databases profiling individual consumers. Email addresses, browsing habits, buying habits, and (where the direct marketers can get them: ), names, snail mail addresses, information from credit bureaus, perhaps even offline buying habits, pharmaceutical (sp? ) records, and whatever else can be bought. To direct marketers, we're all commodities to be bought and sold.
All in the name of wasteful junk mail, pushy telemarketing, annoying blinking banners, irritating door-to-door solicitation, and disgusting spam.
There's something very wrong with this.
----
What's being done in the name of direct marketing nowadays is crazy.
The above are all just my opinions, except where I cite facts as such.
Oh, I am not dc9a320 anywhere except AW. Any others are not me.
Is eBay is changing from a world bazaar into a bizarre world?
[ edited by dc9a320 on Oct 4, 2000 07:34 AM ]
