ClickZ: DoubleClick Disappoints

Poor results in its ad management unit and in its Abacus catalog business undercut DoubleClick's quarterly financials. Its stock traded almost 15 percent lower in the late trading markets after disappointing the street and announcing lowered expectations for the rest of the year. Blame fell on the need for DoubleClick to lower prices in order to save long-term publisher ad serving contracts. While several recent DoubleClick acquisitions came into play, its Performics purchase and several others proved too recent to be folded into this quarter's results.

Jupiter analyst Nate Elliott wrote on his blog that the conference call announcing earning was cringe-inducing. "In a bizarre flashback to 1999, Kevin [Ryan] actually spent part of the call talking up the potential of DoubleClick's e-mail product. It wasn't pretty."