Confirmed: Google Swallows Admeld

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Last week, we reported that Google had acquired Admeld, an advertising optimization platform for publishers, for around $400 million. A couple of days after we broke the story, Google has now officially confirmed the acquisition, albeit without sharing the purchase price.

In a blog post, Google’s VP of Display Advertising, Neal Mohan, says:

Providing better ad management services to publishers is an area that has seen a huge amount of investment in recent months. Formed just over three years ago, the Admeld team is an example of the huge strides the industry is making—it has quickly developed a great service that is helping many major publishers manage their ad space more efficiently and profitably.

By combining Admeld’s services, expertise and technology with Google’s offerings, we’re investing in what we hope will be an improved era of flexible ad management tools for major publishers.

In a message posted by on their company blog, Admeld CEO Michael Barrett says there are no specific integration plans yet. He also points out the two companies will remain independent in the marketplace while the transaction undergoes regulatory review.

More on the acquisition over on industry blog AdExchanger.

Admeld, which launched in 2007, had raised just $30 million in venture capital from Foundry Group, Spark Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Time Warner Investments.

Company: Admeld
Website: admeld.com
Launch Date: October 2007
Funding: $30M

Admeld helps the world’s top online publishers sell their ad inventory smarter. Built and run by publishing veterans, the company provides its clients with expertise and technology to capture new revenue streams, control how they sell each impression, and protect their data and brand. Admeld customers include Answers.com, Discovery Communications, FOX News, Hearst Television, IDG TechNetwork, The Weather Channel and more than 500 others worldwide. The company is headquartered in New York City with offices in London, Berlin,...

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Company: Google
Website: google.com
Launch Date: September 7, 1998
IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...

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