DoubleClick Reportedly in Negotiations to Buy SmartBase
Internet ad company DoubleClick is in negotiations to purchase SmartBase, a catalog cooperative database wholly owned by Acxiom Corp, sources said.
The purchase price is in the $5 million range, the sources said.
Officials from both DoubleClick and Acxiom did not return calls for comment.
The negotiations come on the heels of widely publicized privacy concerns over DoubleClick’s November purchase of data warehouse company Abacus Direct Corp for $1.7 billion. Abacus operates the Alliance catalog cooperative database which has 1,200 catalog members.
The purchase would build on DoubleClick’s business strategy of combining its Web tracking activity with Abacus’s purchase data and personal information such as name and address which has attracted the attention of privacy advocates and consumers who have vocalized their opposition to DoubleClick’s profiling technique. In addition, a lawsuit was filed last month against DoubleClick by an administrative assistant working in California alleging deceptive business practices and a violation of privacy rights.
SmartBase was created by Direct Media, Inc. in 1995. In May 1999 a partnership between Little Rock, AR-based Acxiom Corp. and Abacus Direct announced that it would phase out SmartBase, a direct competitor of Abacus’s Alliance catalog cooperative database. As of last November SmartBase was reported to have included about 400 participants or approximately 52 million names.
Acxiom purchased Direct Media in 1996, and last week Direct Media’s top managers signed an agreement to buy back the firm.
