Article By: Michael Adler (Mike@aclion.com)

I am the Managing Partner at AC Lion and I bring over 12 years of investment banking, venture capital and sales experience to AC Lion. I recently received a newsletter from Rutberg & Company that so perfectly laid out a concise summary and perspective on the key digital media industry events relevant to private equity firms and companies. The newsletter implications included Rutberg & Company's perspectives, adding their own observations, hypotheses, and investment theses. A lot of that information should be respected as exclusive Business Intelligence of which they have requested to remain confidential. Below, I've included some of the more relevant info to our space and leave room for you to formulate your own hypothesis:

• During the one month period from June 1 through June 30, 62 private digital media companies announced $416.7 million in venture capital financings.
• Investments were primarily in the Applications, Content Publishers, and Advertising Infrastructure sectors.
• There were also 37 M&A transactions announced during the period, including Verizon Wireless' acquisition of Alltel, Bain Capital's acquisition of D&M Holdings, and Microsoft's acquisition of Navic Networks.

Here are a few graphs that depict and analyze venture capital and M&A activity for digital media during the first half of 2008....