For Teracent Rival Tumri, Google Becomes A Frenemy

Google’s acquisition of display advertising startup Teracent yesterday had significant meaning for rival Tumri; the San Mateo-based advertising platform now counts tech giant Google as a competitor. Tumri, which launched in 2004, provides a similar advertising technology to Teracent. The startup’s product, the AdPod, creates display ads that are customized in realtime to the specific consumer and site.

Tumri’s dynamic ad platform is optimized at the creative level to enable advertisers to change the animation, background template, featured product, headline, image, and more dynamically based on who is viewing the ad and where the individual is viewing the ad from geographically.

Over the past five years, Tumri has picked up a roster of impressive clients including HP, Dell, Lenovo, Sears, K-Mart, Nike, Bank of America, Expedia and British Airways. While Tumri’s CEO Calvin Lui won’t reveal the startup’s revenue numbers, he says Tumri has seen triple digit revenue growth over the past few years.

Interestingly, Tumri has an ongoing partnership with Google which allows them to serve Tumri’s display ads within Google’s content network and via DoubleClick. Tumri also has partnerships with AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Both Tumrui and Teracent partner with Yahoo to power its Smart Ads program for PC advertisers.

Lui told me that he doesn’t anticipate the partnership with Google ending but he did admit that with the acquisition of Teracent, Google has become somewhat of a “frenemy.” As I wrote yesterday, Google says that Teracent’s technology will now be offered to its display advertising clients who run campaigns in Google’s Content Network and to DoubleClick clients. Both Teracent and Tumri were reported as possible acquisition candidates as of a few weeks ago, but Lui declined to comment on any talks with Google about a buyout.

It’s unclear what the state of these partnerships will be when the dust settles post-acquisition but a Yahoo spokeswoman told me that they anticipate to continue its deal with Teracent. But it should be interesting to see if Google will be ok with parsing out its new advertising technology to competitors. Regardless, Lui and Tumri seem to seem optimistic about its prospects facing now rival Google. Says Lui, “This has been an a great opportunity to evangelize this part of the advertising market.”