Ozi.com

Microsoft is trying to sell its digital ad agency Razorfish to five of the world’s largest ad agencies. According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is trying to set up a deal with mega world ad agencies WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, Interpublic, and Dentsu. Microsoft acquired Razorfish when it purchased the mega million-dollar ad agency, aQuantive in 2007 for six billion dollars. At the time of the purchase, aQuantive was ranked the 14th largest advertising company in the world. WSJ reported that several smaller ad companies were rebuffed when they approached Microsoft to buy Razorfish. Apparently, Microsoft is not just looking for an exchange of money when it makes the sale. It wants to sell Razorfish to an ad company in the position to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars in on-line ads from other Microsoft entities like its search engine Bing, its Zune music player, and its Xbox gaming console. The WJW reported that with respect to the sale "talks are preliminary and that any deal isn't likely to happen for at least a couple of months. According to the WSJ the sales price”, could range widely, from as low as 400 million dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars more, depending on the technology or ad-buying commitments included in the deal”. The reported requirement that the ad agency that purchases Razorfish must provide millions of dollars in ad revenue for Microsoft might just slow down or kill a sale. In addition, there may be questions of conflict of interest raised because Microsoft is a big client of WPP and Interpublic, two of the ad agencies currently negotiating to buy Razorfish. Razorfish has designed ad campaigns for such companies as Best Buy, Mercedes-Benz USA, and Mattel. The agency also created the logo and associated online ads for Bing. In 2008, Razorfish generated $400 million dollars in sales.