iXL Enterprises was an international interactive agency that operated from 1996 until 2002. The company was founded by

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

entrepreneur Bert Ellis, who also served as the company's chairman and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

. At the company's height in 1999, which coincided with the height of the

dot-com boom The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compos ...

, iXL had around 1500 employees, a quarterly revenue of $33 million, and was publicly traded on the

Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

exchange, with ticker symbol "IIXL". After a series of acquisitions, it is now part of the

Razorfish Razorfish may refer to: Species Fish A common name used for three unrelated groups of fishes: * The genera ''Aeoliscus'', and ''Centriscus'', also known as shrimpfishes, in the family Centriscidae * The genus ''Xyrichtys'' of the family Labridae * ...

agency, owned by

Publicis Groupe Publicis Groupe is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. One of the oldest and largest marketing and communications companies in the world by revenue, it is headquartered in Paris. After 1945, the little-known Paris ...

. iXL had its headquarters in Atlanta, with additional offices in Berlin,

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Charlotte Charlotte ( ) is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont (United States), Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Meckl ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

, London, Los Angeles,

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, New York City,

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

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, San Francisco,

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, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. The company also had smaller "satellite offices" in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

and

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

. Many of these offices started out as local interactive agencies that were purchased by iXL, such as Micro Interactive, which became the New York office. It was part of what some in the industry called "The Fast Five", a group of "e-consultancies" that also included

Scient Scient was a San Francisco-based Internet consulting company, founded in 1997, that was one of the large American consulting firms during the dot-com bubble. The company was founded by Eric Greenberg, who had previously founded its competitor, Via ...

Viant Viant Inc. was a multi-national Internet consulting firm, founded in San Francisco in April 1996, that was one of the first web consulting firms during the early stages of the History of the Internet, Internet era. History The company was founde ...

and USWeb/CKS. Notable clients included GE, Delta Air Lines, Budget Rent-A-Car, Chase Bank, Merrill Lynch, The Home Depot, FedEx and WebMD. In November 2001, iXL merged with former competitor Scient, with the two companies operating under the Scient name, but the leftovers were rebranded as Creative Bubble. In July 2002 the joint company filed for

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

. Assets from Scient were purchased by SBI Group in 2003, and merged into Razorfish. That company was then acquired by aQuantive in 2004, and merged into Avenue A , Razorfish. aQuantive was then purchased by Microsoft in 2007, and then subsequently sold to Publicis Groupe in 2009.

References

{{reflist Online companies of the United States Marketing companies established in 1996 Companies disestablished in 2002 Online advertising services and affiliate networks