DM News: DoubleClick Readies Search Tool for Testing

Having first miscalculated the growing importance of search media to its online technology publishing and advertising clients, DoubleClick found itself without a product component to handle the complex inventory management required. Telling investors that it would design its own, it started engineering such a product not very long ago. In the meantime, arch competitors have snapped up existing and established players, such as Go Toast. DoubleClick now tells financial analysts that it is merely weeks away from testing its product.

CEO Kevin Ryan alluded to the second half of 2004 as being the time "to have some interesting things to talk about." Investors fled DoubleClick on Friday, letting the stock fall by about a quarter, after the company reported relatively slow real earnings growth in the midst of an online recovery.