Google’s mission to better improve display advertising continues as it announces its acquisition of Teracent. The technology enables advertisers’ to get the best from their display ads by being able to “pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time — tweaking images, products, messages or colors”. So essentially the technology - which uses sophisticated machine based learning - is able to optimism ads for each impression opportunity so you do not waste you advertising spend on “hit and miss banners”.
Google has seen the potential for this technology and so has quickly moved to acquire it. They see that advertisers will be able to get better results from their display ad campaigns and also in turn enable publishers to make more money from their ad space. As Greg Sterling points out over at Search Engine Land this is a good move from Google as it puts it on par with Yahoo in its ability to deliver dynamic display advertising on the PC, he also states - which is quite interesting – that the ability to combine this technology with recently acquired AdMob will lead to a really great platform for targeting appropriate audiences.