ValueClick gets Smarter!

Congrats to fellow Overture/Goto.com alumnus Talm and Harry over at MeziMedia.  Mezi runs a variety of ecommerce/shopping sites including smarter.com.  Today it was announced that ValueClick is going to acquire Mezi for up to $352m (looks like $100m now and another $252 based on EBITDA performance)!! The press release cites three strategic areas that ValueClick plans to leverage three areas:

• MeziMedia will add scale to ValueClick’s fast-growing Comparison Shopping segment and give the Company a leadership position in the U.S. comparison shopping market. ValueClick currently is a major comparison shopping provider in Europe under the PriceRunner brand.

• MeziMedia will enhance ValueClick’s search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) capabilities. MeziMedia has a sophisticated, proprietary SEM platform and significant expertise and experience in SEO and SEM, which can be leveraged across ValueClick’s businesses and clients.

• MeziMedia will give ValueClick a formal presence in China. MeziMedia has a worldclass
engineering and operations center in Shanghai and has also launched websites in China for comparison shopping, coupons and search.

As a fellow entrepreneur it's amazing that H+T were able to build this from $0 without taking any venture capital.  The news report says that Mezi's revenues were $40m and the company was very profitable.

With NextTag off the market, Mezi sold and TheFind raising a big round, it bets the question, what's next?!