America Online, Inc. to Acquire Advertising.com;

AOL buys Advertising

[Wail]

[home.businesswire.com...]

America Online, Inc., the world's leading interactive services company, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Advertising.com, Inc., a leading provider of results-based interactive marketing services, in a $435 million all-cash transaction.

Advertising.com operates the industry's largest third-party advertising network, reaching more than 110 million unique visitors monthly and over 70% of all U.S. Web visitors, according to comScore Media Metrix in May 2004.

The acquisition complements AOL's Search business and CPM-based relationships by strengthening its position in the fast-growing pay-for-performance area of online advertising. Across the industry, performance-based media accounted for a greater share of advertising than CPM-based deals for the first time ever in Q4 2003.

[ByronM]

Wouldn't this blatently violate there TOS with Google? :)

[nate_king1]

How?

[ByronM]

Last time i checked the TOS for Adsense partners you couldn't run a network that was similar in use/appearance to Adwords/Adsense. With the purchase of Advertising.com this is exactly a service they would be offering.