Google has acquired another medium for its advertising engine by purchasing FeedBurner, a company that distributes syndicated content for blogs and other media Web sites, the companies said Friday.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although the figure of $100 million had been reported by TechCrunch, which broke the story last week.
“This is an area where we saw a lot of opportunity and that was growing quickly,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, said in a conference call with reporters.
Google is the titan of paid search advertising and has a large network of Web sites that host ads Google sells through its AdWords online marketing system. The company has been expanding aggressively into enabling offline forms of advertising, such as in print and on radio and television. Now it can put ads in the more than 430,000 RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds that FeedBurner has and it can expand its AdSense Web site publisher network with the FeedBurner publishers, Wojcicki said.
“If you are a Google advertiser, now you can advertise on feeds that you otherwise may not have had access to,” she said. Also, “our advertisers will have more access to (FeedBurner) publishers.”
Google will figure out “interesting ways” it can integrate FeedBurner technology with its Google Reader, Wojcicki said.
RSS feeds enable media Web sites, bloggers and podcasters to shoot their content directly to readers through so-called RSS readers. FeedBurner helps publishers deliver the RSS feeds, as well as manage the feeds, track usage of the subscribers and serve ads.
The Google deal will undoubtedly shine the spotlight on technology that while growing rapidly, is not yet mainstream.
“We can absolutely help raise the profile of this new distribution vehicle,” said Dick Costolo, chief executive and co-founder of 4-year-old FeedBurner, which is based in Chicago.
Google’s FeedBurner acquisition may just be the tipping point that leads to widespread adoption of RSS and advertising in RSS feeds, said Bill Flitter, founder and vice president of marketing at Pheedo, a FeedBurner rival that feeds ads in RSS feeds.
“There is a market for RSS and RSS analytics in advertising,” he said. “Looking at ads in the feeds, as content moves outside of your site, you need some sort of revenue model. Google has Google Analytics, which makes a good fit with FeedBurner’s analytics.”
The FeedBurner acquisition is just the latest of several recent Google purchases. On Tuesday, it was revealed that Google acquired security software developer GreenBorder Technologies. On Wednesday, it was disclosed that Google has purchased Spanish geo-photo firm Panoramio. In April, Google said it planned to spend $3.1 billion to buy Web ad firm DoubleClick.
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Microsoft today agreed to acquire online advertising company aQuantive for $6 billion in cash, a move that will help the software giant carve out some serious territory in the online advertising battleground.
Microsoft offered $66.50 per share for the company for an 85 percent premium over aQuantive’s Thursday close of $35.87. The price highlights Microsoft’s willingness to open its wallet further in order to catch Google, Yahoo and AOL in the ultra-competitive market for posting ads on Web sites.
aQuantive has boasted significant growth in the decade since its inception, evolving to become the “parent company of one of the industry’s most successful families of digital marketing service and technology companies,” Microsoft said in a statement.
AQuantive includes three main brands: Atlas, which makes the Media Console advertising platform; DRIVEpm, which provides ad services that match advertiser campaigns with publisher inventory; and Avenue A | Razorfish, which as one of the largest online ad agencies in the world, provides advertisers digital marketing consultation and media planning and buying.
“The advertising industry is evolving and growing at an incredible pace, moving increasingly toward online and IP-served platforms, which dramatically increases the importance of software for this industry,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement. “Today’s announcement represents the next step in the evolution of our ad network…”
Microsoft said it will use the aQuantive assets to create next-generation advertising systems, including cross media planning, video-on-demand and IPTV.
Microsoft expects to close the deal in the first half of its fiscal year 2008. aQuantive will continue to operate from its Seattle headquarters as part of Microsoft’s Online Services Business.
Should the deal go through without a hitch, Microsoft will have a powerful weapon to wield. To date, Microsoft has been criticized for not putting its best foot forward in the multi-billion-dollar market for landing ads on precious Internet real estate as Google, Yahoo and AOL increased their share of ad revenue.
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Web auction leader eBay Inc. is in talks to buy Web surfing review site StumbleUpon in a deal worth roughly $75 million, a source familiar with the talks said on Tuesday.
Any potential deal remains tentative and could break down, the source said. It could be weeks before a deal is announced.
“I really don’t want to comment,” said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon’s chief software architect, when reached by phone.
EBay spokesman Catherine England declined to comment. “We don’t comment on rumors and speculation.”
Silicon Valley technology blogs TechCrunch and GigaOm reported on April 18 that eBay was in talks to acquire StumbleUpon in a deal worth between $40 million and $75 million.
StumbleUpon Inc. is an online review site that recommends interesting pages within sites like Flickr, MySpace or YouTube, based on the “thumbs up” or thumbs down” votes of other Web users with shared interests. It counts 2.3 million users.
It combines a social review site with search features and as such presents an alternative to Web search leader Google Inc.. The recommendation features built into the service could serve as a referral system for eBay users to locate Web auctions that interest them, analysts say.
Earlier this year, eBay acquired sports and entertainment event ticketing site StubHub for $307 million.
StumbleUpon, which helps Web users discover new sites based on the ratings of users with similar tastes, was founded in 2001 in Calgary, Canada. After one of its three Canadian founders completed his graduate thesis, the company relocated last year to San Francisco.
Late last year, StumbleUpon introduced a video-watching site that automatically finds and plays videos that match one’s interests to other viewers with shared tastes. The service makes watching short videos on the Web into the equivalent of online TV channels with an endless stream of programming.
Self-funded for next five years, StumbleUpon received a little under $1.5 million in funding in a year ago from investors including Google Inc. director Ram Shriram and Mitch Kapor, creator of the pioneering Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software program.
Other investors were Josh Kopelman, founder of Half.com, which was acquired by eBay in 2000, and angel investor Ron Conway.
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