What do large companies do when they identify a problem and can’t solve it themselves? They spend a lot of money for somebody else to do the job or acquire somebody that has done the job already.

AOL seems to be in desperate need of a European affiliate network. Last year the owners of Tradedoubler rejected AOL’s offer. This year an acquisition seems to go through: buy.at. It’s a UK-based affiliate network with rather basic technical features. Therefore I think that the 150 million dollars are overrated, just like the 900 million for Tradedoubler.