Groupon acquisition

Google Buying Groupon?

Posted by Sam Churchill on November 30th, 2010

Google has offered $5.3 billion for Groupon, in what would be its largest acquisition yet, if completed, says Kara Swisher in All Things D.

The deal may be clinched as early as this week, says Bloomberg. At the price being discussed, Google would be paying almost twice the $3.2 billion it paid for online advertising provider DoubleClick. Google also bought AdMob for $750 million.

Launched in November 2008, Groupon provides localized display advertising. The company offers one “Groupon” per day in each of the markets it serves. If a certain number of people sign up for the offer, then the deal becomes available to all; if the predetermined minimum is not met, no one gets the deal that day.

With every click on Google or Facebook, companies get a chance to grab a bigger slice of the $26 billion annual pie for online advertising, reports the WS Journal.

Google is on track to generate $2.5 billion in annual revenue from selling display ads, according to their third quarter report. Google’s share is 2.7% in display ads.

Facebook has twice the market share of Yahoo among the top hubs for online display advertisements, according to comScore. Google for now is king of search ads, but Facebook is responsible for one out of every four graphical display ads. Facebook’s more than 500 million users spend lots of time online, and ringing up ads in the process.

source: dailywireless.org