AdMeld, an advertising optimization platform for publishers, has been acquired by Google for around $400 million according to multiple sources. The company, which launched in 2007, has raised just $30 million in venture capital from Foundry Group, Spark Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Time Warner Investments.
This is a sweet comeback for CEO Michael Barrett. As I noted in our first post about AdMeld in 2009, Barrett was fired from News Corp. in 2008 when the division that owned MySpace failed to meet a $1 billion revenue target. Most sources we spoke with at the time said he was the fall guy for an unrealistic revenue target to begin with, set by News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch in a previous earnings call.
