Google’s recent acquisitions go back to its roots

Contact: Scott Denne

With Google’s announcement that it has picked up Adometry and its purchase in February of spider.io, the search giant has now made two acquisitions in support of its core business. The deals come after a nearly three-year hiatus from buying advertising companies. Its last announced advertising acquisition was the purchase of online exchange AdMeld in June 2011.

The recent transactions come as Google faces a slowdown in part of its ad business. Advertising revenue on Google’s own websites grew 20% in 2013 to $37.45bn, but sales from its ad networks and exchanges decelerated. That revenue was up only 5% to $13.13bn in 2013, compared with a 20% rise the year earlier, while already thin gross margins tightened during those years.

Adometry sells advertising attribution services that could boost Google’s network revenue by helping advertisers understand which ads help move prospects closer to a purchase, rather than giving all the credit to the last ad a customer clicks. It could also help Google attract more brand advertisers to its properties and networks, in addition to the direct-response advertisers that are drawn to Google’s pay-per-click model.

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