Justice Department will review Google’s proposed $400 million acquisition of the display advertising company Admeld, according to a person briefed on the investigation.The Justice Department declined to comment.
Rob Shilkin, a Google spokesman, in a statement responding to questions about the inquiry, said: “This acquisition is designed to help publishers get the most from the rapidly growing display advertising industry, which is both complicated and incredibly competitive. The emergence in recent years of a huge variety of technologies for publishers, like Admeld’s, is great evidence of that.”
The deal to acquire Admeld, announced Monday, was expected to attract regulatory scrutiny because of its size, and because antitrust officials have been keeping close track of everything Google does.
The question was whether the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission, which share antitrust responsibilities, would undertake the review. The F.T.C. investigated Google’s acquisition of AdMob, a mobile advertising company, last year. It is now considering a broad investigation of Google’s dominance in search, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Admeld helps Web publishers sell ad space in real time, including with Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Executives of several competing companies have played down concern about an acquisition because they say that Web publishers have many options in this area, and that Google is far from dominant in display advertising.
In a blog post Monday announcing the deal, Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president for display advertising, fired a pre-emptive shot to try to ease regulators’ concerns by saying that Admeld would continue to work with other ad exchanges and networks.
“Of course, Admeld will continue to support other ad networks, demand-side platforms, exchanges and ad servers, to yield the best possible results for publishers,” he wrote.
