[hooande]

That's a decent summary, but the actual marketplace is far more complex and strategic than that.

AdMeld was a pub aggregator, a company that offers ad optimization to a large number of publishers (relying more on scale than technology imo). There are several other pub aggregators, including PubMatic and the Rubicon Project. It's a growing segment within the overall online advertising industry and google needed to be involved in it to stay competitive strategically. So they chose to buy AdMeld. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the other major pub aggregators is acquired or merges in the next few months.

At one point I had laid out the strategic online advertising market on a map from the board game Risk. It has a level of depth and complexity that I think is really interesting.