If your bid to acquire a company is being questioned by the FTC for “anticompetitive” reasons, you have to love when another high-profile company decides to enter the very same space. So for Google, Apple’s decision to launch its mobile advertising platform, dubbed iAd, could not have come at a better time. Google’s $750 million bid for mobile ad leader AdMob, who currently serves up a third of all mobile adverts, has been under serious scrutiny by the FTC. Antitrust regulators are citing concerns about the amount of money, or lack thereof, the users — mostly developers — of services like AdMob are paid. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt commented on Apple’s new presence in the mobile ad space by saying it is: “evidence of a highly competitive market.” We thought he might say that. Will iAd, with its one platform target, really be enough to sway the FTC into green-lighting the AdMob acquisition? Only time will tell.
