According to the Wall Street Journal, the Google proposed takeover of advertising tech company AdMeld will be getting antitrust review by the Department of Justice.
The FTC got the review of Google’s AdMob and DoubleClick deals, so it looks like it’s DOJ’s turn, especially with the FTC apparently launching a more broad-based antitrust investigation into whether the company is abusing its dominant position in Internet search.
The WSJ appears to be skeptical of any antitrust problems in the Admeld case, writing:
Executives of some Web publishers say companies like Admeld, which are also called “supply-side platforms,” aren’t critical to their business. The platforms help manage ad space that sells for just a fraction of the price of ads that publishers sell directly to advertisers.
In the future, Google hopes to use Admeld to help publishers sell ad space on their sites through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, an automated, stock-market-like marketplace that matches ad buyers and sellers, said a person familiar with the matter…
At least one Admeld competitor has said it doesn’t believe the Admeld deal will hurt competition in the burgeoning display-advertising market. Admeld’s competitors are already trying to woo Admeld’s publisher clients by appealing to their concerns over Google’s growing influence in the display market, which Google has said could become a $200 billion industry.