ValueClick Not “All That”, According to Q2 Results

Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, WPP Group, and AOL sittin’ on a fence

Passing over ValueClick cuz they got sense.

It’s high school all over again. Right Media, DoubleClick, aQuantive, and 24/7 get "adopted" by the cool kids for whatever reason and it is looking more and more like ValueClick is going to get left on the sideline. Maybe they didn’t have the right-colored checkered Vans.

Mediapost reports that shares dropped as much as 23.5% on Monday. In May, during the M&A frenzy  when the popular clique was extending its hand towards the lesser-known, like teen movie social makeover artists Cher from Clueless, or for our older audience, or Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady/Pygmalion, online advertising company ValueClick was rumored to be the next purchase. But maybe they started flying too high. Stock prices grew to $36.70 which put it out of reach of many potential acquirers. 

And now with this lead gen whoo-hah, their potential strengths in display ads, behavioral
targeting, affiliate marketing and comparison shopping are being overshadowed by the $10 million hit. Both publishers and advertisers are pulling back, for fear that ValueClick will get nailed during the FTC’s industry-wide probe into promotional lead generation practices.

Paul R. La Monica concludes on CNN Money:

…investors need to be cautious. Picking stocks, not sectors, makes
more sense. Every business, even one as robust as online advertising
will have its winners and losers. And just because a company is a loser
doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily going to be taken over for a big
premium. Rather, it may simply continue to struggle for the foreseeable
future.