The CEO Game

Blow for Yahoo? Strike on Bing? Google Acquires Teracent for Targeted Display Ad Technology

Internet giant Google announced today on buying Teracent, an American startup company which specializes in display advertising. This is another step in Google’s waged war on the control of the advertising market, with the arch rival Yahoo and newly sworn enemy Bing by Microsoft. Unfortunately, the financial terms are undisclosed and haven’t been revealed yet. Google whose income comes mainly from textual advertising which is search related, intends to maneuver the purchase in order to base its status in the field of online graphical targeted advertising. This announcement underscores Google’s plans to double down in display advertisement.

A New Age For Interactive Ads?

This is no surprise, last year Google completed purchasing the online advertising company Double Click, which also deals with display advertising for 3.2$ billion. Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt claimed on September that Google plans to return to making purchases, after a minor pause, or setback if you wish, due to the global financial crisis. At the time, he also said that Google wishes to “buy a company a month” (on average). It seems Google is keen on fulfilling its chairman’s announcement: under-less than two weeks ago, Google bought AdMob, which provides solutions for cellular marketing for 750$ million in shares in a deal which is meant to sweep the cellular advertising market.

Teracent was founded by Vikas Jha, former vice president of Inktomi, a software company which was acquired by Yahoo. Teracent, the California based company runs software that lets private advertisers, agencies and ad networks to deliver multiple versions of ads to different users across the Web and on mobile phones. It is triggered by certain information that can be determined on the user from the web such as location, gender, income and interests. A fashion giant like Lacoste or Calvin Klein would be able to use Teracent’s technology to advertise a promo for its winter collection for Vancouver viewers, while users from Sunny San Diego might see new summer accessories.

This concept is nothing new, many competitors such as Tumri and Dapper have been behaviorally targeting viewers so they can promote customized ads. The only difference is that Google is going to use the software to automate display ads in the same manner it did with search ads, trying to make web display ads relevant more than ever for both advertisers and consumers. This move means that the entire search industry could be shifting to display ads. It’s also a slap in the face of Yahoo who previously partnered with Teracent for some business ventures. Up to now, Yahoo has surpassed Google in display ads.

In conclusion, the move comes as a blow to Yahoo, which may have to end the aforementioned partnership with Teracent, but it’s a big win for the marketers, which will be able to create interactive ads that will customize themselves just like search ads do, hitting the iron when it’s hot. Just so you know, last year, the popular Internet search engine had an income of 22$ billion, I suggest keeping an eye on the next year’s income.

More from The CEO Game on Google: Google’s investment in the EBM, and Google Planet.

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.

Today I’m not going to talk about for or against open source, nor I’m not going to discuss the ups and downs of free software since many have done so before. Today I would like you to think global or in other words I would like you to view things universally:

The Open Source Leaders

Suppose for just a moment that every Application, Operation System (Windows, Unix and etc), Computer-Game, etc’ internals were free to view, manipulate and redistribute. Can you imagine where could we have been today?

Imagine Microsoft and Apple joining forces and working together.

Google, Yahoo and Bing all doing their best to improve our search experience.

Do we really prefer the choice instead of knowing we’re using the best application out there?

Do we really believe that competition is the better way for the human race?

Why wouldn’t the big companies go on and open their source code? Well the answer for that is quite simple and obvious, the reason is Money (and allot of it). It seems inevitable as long as money is at stake and obliviously there’s no big money if any in open source. On the other hand take a look at the change our world experiences thanks to free software, and the free information sharing through the Internet.

Today’s world where more and more sophisticated applications find their way over to the cloud, it seems absurd charging money from users, take Google docs for example. Google docs became a reasonable substitute for Microsoft office and in this case money isn’t made by selling the software to the end user.

So way isn’t it code free? Sure there’s a rich API but why Google didn’t took the next required step and publish its source code?

It’s seems to me that we as society have this boundary which forbids us from thinking as a whole and viewing ourselves as a single unit trying to push our limits by joining forces, All for the same cause. Imagine where could have we been today if we started working together for a change.

Looking ahead it seems the future of open source seems bright:

Sites like http://www.codeplex.com/ and http://www.codeproject.com/ are adding new content on a daily basis and Linux base operation system seems to finds their way into more and more large organization (such as the German and Belgium governments).

We at the CEO game understand that a competitive world is inevitable but we also believe in clarity, wisdom of the crowds, fast learning and sharing. All of which are part of thinking open source.

I opened with a statement that I won’t be talking in favour or against open source but I’m sure you can guess on which side I’m.

Roi.

The CEO Game.