Google said Friday it will pay $140 million for a Russian contextual advertising company as it seeks to expand its services to advertisers and Web-site publishers outside the U.S. The 6-year-old company, Zao Begun but known as Begun, has a search and contextual advertising business, with about 40,000 advertisers and a network of 143,000 Russian-language Web sites.
Last month Begun launched a contextual video advertising service, Begun.Videocontext, the first such service in Russia, according to Rambler Media, a Russian company that runs a search engine, instant messaging service, an online newspaper and a price-comparison site, among other Internet properties. The service is wrapped into Rambler Vision, a video-sharing Web site. Advertisers can place ads that match users" search queries. Videos are tagged with metadata, and Begun"s system takes into account the viewer"s location along with demographic information. Advertisements appear below the main content, and users have the option of closing that window completely.