Google Moves to Acquire Teracent

Google has reached an agreement to purchase Teracent, a startup which has built a technology platform that promises to enable advertisers to adjust and customize online display ads on the fly. Teracent's technology customizes graphic advertisements based on who is watching them, so that a retailer's closest store could become part of an ad, for example, or new products could be swapped into a company's standard ad with minimal effort. Ads can also be changed based on the time of day and a person's language. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Executives at Google expected the transaction to close during the current quarter. The Google acquisition is part of an effort to expand the base of display advertisers by automating the creative process. Google has long predicted that via the Internet, brands, particularly direct response brands, will eventually be able to advertise every single product in their portfolio, rather than putting resources behind a product or two in a single national ad campaign.