The New York Times has an article which explores the acquisition interest in financial news sites of late.

Dow Jones won the bidding with a deal, expected to be completed today, for $519 million, about six times MarketWatch’s 2004 revenue. The four-way frenzy among the companies to own MarketWatch outright may be the strongest sign that news and information sites, long thought to be dot-gone relics of 1999, are making a big comeback in 2005.

Many of the same companies that were badly burned by Internet investments before are aggressively bidding for these sites not just because of the growing online ad business but because, like Dow Jones, they are worried that their current Web sites will not be able to keep up with demand.

“The existing old-line media companies, which have a big stake in where people advertise, have to recognize this medium,” said Larry S. Kramer, a founder and chief executive of MarketWatch. “Our audience means more to them now because it’s not just revenue they are going to pick up. It’s revenue they are going to lose.”

I wonder how much the bull run of the last two years had to do the amount of interest in these sites. If the bear comes back that MarketWatch purchase may start to look really expensive.

On a related note — I’ll gladly sell my site for just 5 times ad revenue which amounts to the whopping sum of… oh never mind. :-)

Update: Susan just wrote a post covering some other angles on internet ad revenue. She also points to this article about a recent Goldman Sachs study — “Newspaper advertising being infringed upon by internet ad campaigns” Interesting times…