Claria Cancels $150 million IPO

Claria Cancels $150 million IPO
Contextual advertising and pop up company Claria Corp. has canceled plans for a $150 million initial public offering due to “current market conditions,” it said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

Claria, which filed its original prospectus in April of this year, had not disclosed the number of shares it intended to sell or an expected price range.

Claria turned a 2003 profit of $34.9 million on revenue of $90.5 million, the April filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said.

Ironically, the Claria IPO news comes the day of the Google IPO registration and the week of the announcement by Yahoo that their new toolbar will block Claria “ad ware” advertising – even though Claria is a partner of Yahoo’s Overture Ad Network.

The final anti-spyware Yahoo toolbar now treats Claria’s Gator adware the same as other annoying software.

But why has Yahoo turned against Gator? Claria is one of Overture’s largest partners and delivers a large amount of revenue to Yahoo.

“We listened to the feedback we received from our users during the beta period, and have made a few minor modifications to Anti-Spy,” Yahoo spokesman Aaron Ferstman wrote in an e-mail to CNet.

CNet Reports:

“Yahoo subsidiary Overture Services has had an agreement with Claria since 2002 to provide keyword-related text ads to users of Claria’s GAIN (Gator Advertising and Information Network) technology. The way it works is that Overture’s ads appear on GAIN’s pop-up windows, called Search Scout, which are triggered when users type in search queries on sites including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN and others.”