By Michael Liedtke, Technology Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --Google Inc. has struck a deal to buy Admeld, a service that helps websites make more money from online advertising.
The agreement announced Monday positions Google to add another potentially valuable weapon to its advertising arsenal. Google already sells the most advertising on the Internet. The company’s total ad revenue is expected to surpass $30 billion this year — greater than the entire U.S. newspaper industry.
For that reason, the proposed acquisition of Admeld may face more regulatory scrutiny than most deals of its size do.
Financial terms of the Admeld agreement weren’t disclosed, an indication that Google isn’t paying a high enough price for the proposed acquisition to be considered a major financial event.
Founded three years ago, privately held Admeld employs about 100 workers at its New York headquarters and other offices in San Francisco, London, Berlin and Toronto.
Admeld’s service is focused on marketing campaigns that promote brands and typically feature imagery. The format is known as display advertising, an area where Google Inc. has been gaining market share since its $3.2 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. in 2008.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission spent a year examining the DoubleClick deal, still the largest acquisition in Google’s 13-year history.
Google has been building its display advertising business to supplement its dominance of Internet search and the text-based ads that run alongside search results as well as other Web content.
The diversification has been working out so well that the research firm IDC said Google surpassed the Internet’s long-time display advertising leader, Yahoo Inc., during the first three months of this year. IDC estimated Google held 14.7 percent of the U.S. online display ad market in the first quarter, followed by Yahoo at 12.3 percent and Facebook at 8.8 percent.
“Together with Admeld, we hope to make display advertising simpler, more efficient and more valuable,” Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president of display advertising, wrote in a Monday post on Google’s blog.
Admeld works with websites to help them figure out how to make the most money from the amount of space they have available to show display ads. Its list of customers includes News Corp., IAC/InterActiveCorp., Thomson Reuters Corp. and Pandora Media Inc., which is preparing to go public this week.
Google didn’t specify a timetable for closing the Admeld acquisition. The company’s executives have repeatedly said they expect regulators around the world to take more time poring over how Google’s acquisitions might affect competition on the Internet.
The intensified scrutiny hasn’t curbed Google’s appetite for acquisitions. Since the end of 2009, Google has spent more than $2.6 billion buying more than 60 companies.
“Overnight Success” Has Been More Than A Decade In The Making For Meghann Fahy and Eve Hewson
Meghann Fahy and Eve Hewson, two of the stars of Netflix's whodunit "The Perfect Couple," have news for you if you want to call them breakouts: They've been working in this business for more than a decade.
Fahy made her TV debut in 2009 in an episode of "Gossip Girl." Hewson's first big film role was in 2011's "This Must Be the Place." They do concede, however, that it's recent TV roles — "The White Lotus" for Fahy and "Bad Sisters" for Hewson — that have led to new frontiers of opportunity.
Susanne Bier, who directed "The Perfect Couple," says both Fahy and Hewson are "going to be big stars."
"They certainly have proper, profound star quality, Both of them in very different ways," Bier says. "Both are incredibly creative, incredibly smart, and also have a impressive insight as to who they are. You can be a great actor or actress and not necessarily really know who you are yourself. And they do."
Hewson, 33, whose dad is U2 front man Bono, may have grown up in a famous family but she's now in demand in her own right. She will next be seen in a second season of "Bad Sisters, " out in November. She's in Noah Baumbach's next film, alongside Adam Sandler, George Clooney and Riley Keough. She's also been cast in Steven Spielberg's next production and is set to star opposite Murray Bartlett in a racing series for Hulu.
Fahy, 34, is in production on a limited series with Julianne Moore and Milly Alcock called "Sirens," written by Molly Smith Metzler ("Maid") for Netflix. She also has two films in the can with Josh O'Connor ("The Crown," "Challengers") and Brandon Sklenar ("It Ends With Us").
The two actors spoke candidly about this phase of their careers. This interview has been condensed for clarity and... Read More