Google gets domain name for a key online advertising term.
With the Ad-Tech conference kicking off this morning in San Francisco, it’s only fitting to report this morning that Google has acquired the domain name RealTimeBidding.com.
For those not in the online advertising industry, real time bidding allows advertisers to bid on advertising one impression at a time, often based on audience data.
The domain name RealTimeBidding.com has an interesting history. It was first registered back in 2001. It was then registered again in 2005 by a company that provides services to offline and online auctions having nothing to do with advertising. It expired in 2010 and was picked up by someone using GoDaddy whois privacy.
While it’s possible that Google picked up the domain when it expired, I doubt it. It’s also possible the domain came along with an acquisition some time in 2010 or later, but the acquired company had the domain’s whois record protected for some reason.
[Update: indeed, it looks like the domain name came along with the AdMeld acquisition. Google’s cache of the site form March 29 resolves to the Admeld web site. So Google has basically dropped the ball somehow on the transfer since it no longer resolves; it appears to have been forwarded previously.]
Yesterday the domain name transferred to brand protection registrar Mark Monitor and whois record changed to show Google:
The domain name points to Google’s nameservers but does not yet resolve.
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