The Marketing Society

I know a lot of you marketing folks wouldn’t want to touch finance with a 10 foot pole, but it does pay to know exactly what goes on as the two work hand in hand to make business work.

This post written by Marc Andreessen is an excellent guide at how finance works using a very current example, Microsoft’s offer to acquire Yahoo!. He gives several scenarios and explains each of the cases in easy-to-understand detail.

One other interesting thing to address: what’s going to happen in the future?

If Microsoft is successful, bloggers everywhere will rejoice at being allowed to use the term “Microhoo” yet another time. Microsoft is going to have to deal with somehow keeping Yahoo’s employees (or at least the good ones). The Silicon Valley sees Microsoft as the Overlord up in Washington, and if many employees feel that they’re getting oppressed by Microsoft’s stern hand, there might be a mass exodus. This is going to take a lot of well-trained image management experts.

And if this takeover does not end up working, I’m almost certain Microsoft has some tactics for that situation too. Microsoft will probably be angry that its efforts failed and will look to somehow strike with much stronger force, either against Yahoo or in some other area.

So what does this have to do with marketing? The future of online advertising is going to be shaped out by this event. Will Google finally have a major competitor to contend with? Will advertisers see more options when choosing ad networks? What’ll happen to the little firms that are still fighting consolidation? We’ll only have to wait and see.

Sarah