Google is in talks to buy AdMeld, a display advertising company, for $400 million, according to the New York Times. TechCrunch first reported the acquisition, but inside sources told the Times that the deal hadn’t been finalized and that negotiations could still fall apart. An acquisition of that size by Google could attract regulatory scrutiny before closing, said the Times.
Founded in 2007, AdMeld helps publishers choose from dozens of advertising networks sell their ads in real time. The company is run by Michael Barrett, the former chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media, and has raised more than $30 million in venture capital. It currently has over 500 customers including Fox News, The Weather Channel, and Hearst Television.
On Thursday, Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president of display advertising, gave a keynote at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Internet Week event in which he emphasized the importance of display advertising, which he believes could grow to be a $200 billion industry. (Eric Schmidt made this same claim in February.) “We’re at the beginning of a user-focused revolution, where people connect and respond to display ads in ways we’ve never seen before,” Mohan wrote in a blog post about his speech.
