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Technology Stocks : DoubleClick Inc (DCLK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: joshi who wrote (104)	3/16/1998 6:35:00 PM
From: MediaMaven	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 2902

Just a word of caution to all of you. If you check carefully, you'll find that although Alta Vista was 43% of overall sales for 1997, AV just started taking ads in late December of 1996. That means that it was "ramping up" during the year. By fourth quarter, it could well have been 65% of DC sales. So, if they exercise their 90 day out clause this July (they have one, you know), DC is effectively out of business. In addition, a friend was at I World last week and told me a couple of things: 1) Imgis has far better ad serving and data management systems and are competing directly in DC space (effectively, too). Apparently, DoubleClick DART isn't cutting it in the marketplace. 2) DC took all the barter (ads that exchange with other DC sites to build traffic)away from its sites and stuck them with extremely low cpm "DoubleClick" direct inventory that they apparently promised they would never do. This means that DoubleClick direct is a flop or they wouldn't take the chance of pissing off their sites. 3) Apparently, the whole system is built on a single set of code and they don't have a test bed to test new stuff-they just plop it into the system. Someone told my friend that they have one guy who does all this programming and if he gets hit by a truck, kaboom. 4) They have no domestic "distributed" distribution up yet so if the lights go out in NYC, kaboom. (Apparently, they're trying to get something going in California but, so far, it doesn't work. 5) They claim 100% of revenue booked for Alta Vista and their network sites but only keep somewhere between 20-30%, kind of like a sales rep. However, investors are paying for the top line sales and not the true revenue which is way, way below this, ie. somewhere in the 30% range. Frankly, I don't care who recommends it. Between Alta Vista's 90 day out clause, a single programmer, no test bed, a single domestic plant, an inflated top line and a bunch of pissed off web sites, they have a little too much risk piled up right now.