Radnor, Pa.—Google Inc. has agreed to acquire Channel Intelligence, which provides e-commerce services to online retailers, from ICG Group for $125 million in cash.
CI allows retailers to manage product listings on comparison shopping sites such as Google Shopping and helps clients set up “where to buy it” buttons on their websites. CI customers have included Hewlett-Packard Co., Kimberly-Clark Corp. and Microsoft Corp.
“We want to help consumers save time and money by improving the online shopping experience,” said a Google spokeswoman. “We think Channel Intelligence will help create a better shopping experience for users and help merchants increase sales across the Web.”
Separately, Google released Enhanced Campaigns, a tool that combines paid-search ads on desktops and mobile devices. It enables marketers to manage bids across devices, locations and time of day, the company said.
“With Enhanced Campaigns, instead of having to cobble together and compare several separate campaigns, reports and ad extensions to do this, the pizza restaurant can easily manage all of this in one single place,” said Google in an official blog post. “Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads based on their context—like location, time of day and device type—across all devices without having to set up and manage several separate campaigns.”
