Adknowledge acquires ad network business of SocialMedia.com

Adknowledge, an independently owned ad network, has acquired the advertising business of SocialMedia.com. Financial terms of the deal, announced this week, were not disclosed.

“Consumers spend a lot of time on search, but they spend an enormous about of time in social media, as well as in products like e-mail,” said Chris Smutny, VP for social applications and online gaming at AdKnowledge. “We think there is a lot of opportunity for advertisers to reach beyond type in search. We are looking to be a single stop for online game developers.”

The acquisition strengthens Adknowledge's position in targeting publishers and advertisers in the social apps and social games space. Adknowledge partners with more than 2,000 publishers and developers and has made four acquisitions in the social media space in the past two years.

“We have been focused on direct response advertisers. As soft as the general economy has been, this has been a strength, and we've been using our strong position financially to grow through acquisition,” added Smutny.

In March, Adknowledge acquired the media business of Miva, an online ad network. In July, it purchased Super Rewards, a virtual currency monetization platform. Last November, Adknowledge bought Lookery, a company that analyzes demographic data on social network users and markets it to ad networks, as well as Adonomics, a provider of Facebook analytics and developer services.

Adknowledge delivers more than 700 million banner impressions daily to consumers using Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites, accounting for 10% of total daily page impressions on Facebook.

The SocialMedia.com platform was set to be fully integrated on November 20. SocialMedia.com will continue to operate, focusing on its core business of developing a social advertising platform designed to work across the Web.