Google Acquisitions by Year, 2001-2007

Mashable posted a graph (with the data included in an embeded excel spreadsheet) outlining the acquisitions Google has made over the past 6 years.

CBS Aggressive with on-line acquisitions

CBS has made a handful of acquisitions from wallstrip for $5 million to CNET for $1.8 billion. Here is an interesting interview with the head of M&A strategy at CBS, Mike Marquez.

The interview is available on mashable.com here.

Much of CBS acquisition strategy focuses on on-line video, but they are looking to make a variety of acquisitions that fit with their vision to grow their on-line presence, audience and advertising revenue.

Two more basketball content sites acquired

Kristen Nicole of Mashable first reported these acquisitions back in late March.

CraveOnline recently purchased HoopsVibe and StreetBallTalk…both basketball focused websites that will expand CraveOnline’s male-oriented on-line properties. Fantasy Sports Ventures has also made several acquisitions to build up its on-line sports presence including a similar sized (according to compete) baseketball site called HoopsHype.com.

While the acquiring companies are different, the strategy is the same…acquire existing sports properties with large, engaged audiences to generate enough traffic to attract the large advertisers. CraveOnline won’t have to touch these on-line properties (which is probably good for all involved, especially the loyal users) to increase the CPMs 5-10x what these sites were previously earning. The starting point for large advertisers seems to be 1 million unique visitors…it appears CraveOnline has surpassed that figure and these acquisitions further increase their scale.