Google Bolsters Its Advertising Business with Invite Media Acquisition

Having just closed the AdMob acquisition, Google is not wasting any time and is acquiring another advertising startup, Invite Media. According to Media Memo, the giant has already acquired the ad company for about $70 million. Both companies are yet to confirm the transaction and Google is not commenting at all.

Invite Media operates a ‘universal buying platform’ for display advertising called Bid Manager. The service enables advertisers to manage their campaigns across several ad-exchange networks including Google’s own Ad Exchange but also OpenX, Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange and Microsoft’s AdECN Exchange. In a sense, it sits right at the top of the food chain and the product appeals more to big advertisers who need real-time data and easy ways to quickly shift ad inventory.

Apparently, the plan is to continue to operate Bid Manager ‘as is’ after the acquisition. Obviously, since one of the best reasons for using it is access to several ad exchanges, it wouldn’t make too much sense to lock it down. In time, Google plans to integrate it more with its existing products that are part of DoubleClick. The two platforms will be designed to work together, but DoubleClick won’t be the exclusive option even at that time.

Google makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising, but display ads play a small part of that, with the bulk being search ads and text ads part of the AdSense network. Google acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash in 2008. Since then, it has been trying to build up the business. Recently, it has launched a revamped DoubleClick with more tightly integrated products and a more cohesive strategy.

Still, Google is looking at expanding its advertising business either with new products, as it is the case with this latest purchase, or by entering new markets like it did with the AdMob acquisition. It already had search advertising products for mobiles, but, with AdMob, Google got into display ads as well as in-app ads.