Wow, Google has taken another move to deepen its penetration into online advertising market by acquiring DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. Just for reference, Google paid $1.65 billion in stock to purchase YouTube late last year.

“Google really wants to get into the display advertising business in a big way, and they don’t have the relationships they need to make it happen,” said Dave Morgan, the chairman of Tacoda, an online advertising network. “But DoubleClick does. It gives them immediate access to those relationships.”

The sale offers Google access to DoubleClick’s advertisement software and, more importantly, its relationships with Web publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies.

For months, Google has been trying to expand its foothold in online advertising into display ads, the area where DoubleClick is strongest. Google made its name and still generates most of its revenue from search and contextual text ads.

DoubleClick, which was founded in 1996, provides display ads on Web sites like MySpace, The Wall Street Journal and America Online as well as software to help those sites maximize ad revenue. The company also helps ad buyers — advertisers and ad agencies — manage and measure the effectiveness of their rich media, search and other online ads.

DoubleClick has just recently developed a Nasdaq-like exchnage for online ads where Web publishers and advertisers can participate in auctions for ad space.

It is really interesting to see how Google will expand its reach by offering more ad options for advertisers and speculatively more ads to display for Web publishers through existing programs.