DoubleClick, New York’s once highflying Internet advertising company, has reportedly begun shopping itself around and is likely to sell itself off in pieces, according to corporate intelligence firm Mergermarket.

Ironically, the piece of the former Internet icon’s business that is reportedly getting the most attention from potential suitors is Abacus, a decidedly non-Internet-oriented catalog database company that DoubleClick bought in 1999 in a failed attempt to get banner ads on its network performing better.

DoubleClick put out a statement in November saying it had retained Lazard Freres & Company to “explore strategic options for the business in order to achieve greater shareholder value.” Those options included the sale of part or all of its businesses, recapitalization, an extraordinary dividend, share repurchasing, or a spin-off, the company said.

A person familiar with the situation said that DoubleClick is exploring all its options, and that if a sale does take place, the company will likely be sold in pieces.

A DoubleClick spokeswoman, Jennifer Miller, declined to comment.

Abacus is likely to fetch between $250 million and $300 million, or about nine times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, according to London-based Mergermarket.

DoubleClick acquired the so-called co-op database concern in the summer of 1999 in an all-stock deal valued at $1 billion. At the time, DoubleClick’s shares were trading at just under $89.

DoubleClick’s shares have been trading in the $8 range since mid-November, and were trading significantly lower during the summer.

Abacus operates a database into which catalogers feed their customers’ names, contact information, and recent purchase histories in return for the right to buy the names and contact information from other Abacus contributors of people who have bought products like theirs, and as a result, are statistically highly likely to buy from them.

Abacus claims to have information on tens of millions of households from more than 1,000 catalogs.

DoubleClick’s original plan for Abacus was to get Web surfers to register on Web sites in its online ad network and match those names and addresses to information in the Abacus database. The company then planned to place cookies on those Web surfers’ computers and deliver online advertising according to their offline purchasing behavior so that say, Land’s End could deliver a banner ad to someone it knew had bought clothing by mail order.

However, the idea was met with a firestorm of concerns over privacy and never got off the ground.

Since the original plan for Abacus backfired, DoubleClick has never achieved so-called synergy among its business units, according to people familiar with the company.

DoubleClick has since sold its ad net work and turned itself into a marketing technology and services firm.

However, though Abacus and its contributors are highly secretive, by all accounts, the service still works like gangbusters for catalogers.

“Abacus is definitely the jewel in that crown,” said New York-based marketing consultant Ruth Stevens. “We in the industry are seeing it growing like crazy.”

Catalogers are under more pressure than ever to mail more efficiently, enhancing Abacus’s value as they seek ways to avoid mailing to people who aren’t likely to buy from them. Environmentalists have recently stepped up political activity against catalog companies they believe are responsible for killing too many trees, according to the chief executive of the Direct Marketing Association, John A. Greco Jr., in a speech to members of the industry earlier this month.

Moreover, postal rates are expected to rise again in the spring of 2006, making catalogs even more expensive to send.

“It already costs catalogers $2 a book to get into people’s mailboxes,” said the director of new member development at one of Abacus’s competitors, I-Behavior, Lisa Moore.

It is rumored that the no. 1 potential suitor for Abacus is database giant Acxiom, said Ms. Moore. The rumor stands to reason as the Conway Ark.-based firm attempted to build an Abacus-like service in the late 1990s, but then sold it to DoubleClick for $4.7 million in November 2000.

Acxiom declined comment. “Acxiom has a long-standing policy of not commenting on rumors or speculation,” said a company spokesman, Jonathan Portis.