Yahoo Buys Ad Network Interclick for $270 Million

Aha! A Yahoo rumor that is actually true: The portal is buying ad network Interclick for $270 million.

The all-cash deal values each Interclick share at $9, or about 21 percent higher than the $7.4 per share that the New York-based company closed at yesterday. It’s supposed to close “by early 2012.”

Ad tech sources have been buzzing about a big Yahoo M&A play for many months, and several folks have pointed to Interclick as a logical candidate.

You can try to parse the explanation of the deal in the release below, but I’ll try to sum it up here:

Among Yahoo’s many problems is that its once-great sales organization is broken. Yahoo Americas boss Ross Levinsohn believes he can fix it with a combination of new talent and technology, as well as a strength-in-numbers plan he has tried to cobble together with Microsoft and AOL. Interclick fits into this plan because Yahoo intends to use the company’s tech and relationships to help it sell more of the remnant inventory that it currently hands over to ad networks.

It’s also worth pointing out the obvious here — that even as Yahoo’s endless sale-or-maybe-not-who-knows process grinds along, the company still has to keep operating. This isn’t a game-changer for Yahoo, and at less than 2 percent of its market cap, something bigger than a tuck-in, but still pretty small. But whoever does end up with Yahoo will want an ad business that’s not spiraling into a hole, so if this helps Levinsohn pull that off, it will be money well-spent.