After months of repeatedly rebuffing WPP Group’s £1.14 billion takeover bid, media measurement firm TNS is now telling its shareholders to approve the deal, Reuters reports. WPP made the offer…

Read more »

As part of its goal to increase its online classifieds holdings, eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) has turned to Denmark to buy Den Bla Avis and BilBasen for $390 million (about 2.1…

Read more »

Media buying and planning firm Aegis Group’s latest acquisition is a little off the beaten path. It has bought fellow London-based company Clownfish, which helps advise marketers on crafting more…

Read more »

Online video search firm Blinkx, which is publicly traded on the AIM market, has dropped its public bid to acquire pay-per-click ad network MIVA. The London- and San Francisco-based Blinkx…

Read more »

French content storage company Steek has bought Paris-based teen social net platform Amiz.fr. Terms weren’t disclosed. Steek works with telcos and ISPs. Alarm Clock Euro says the company seems to…

Read more »

European digital “label” Believe Digital has a two-fer this week: the acquisition of MTunes, a German digital distribution company with Media2Radio, and a $6.5 million second round. The combined company…

Read more »

Investment research firm Morningstar is buying Fundamental Data Limited, a UK provider of online information about so-called “closed-end funds”, a type of of investment scheme, for £11 million ($19 million).…

Read more »

The gathering advertising recession is now forcing a re-consideration of some media M&A activity. US-based Global Traffic Network’s (GTN) £15 million purchase of UK radio outfit UBC Media’s traffic, news…

Read more »

The last time we checked in on Reuters, right after the Lehman failure, CEO Tom Glocer maintained his optimism, but admitted that a sustained global depression would not be good…

Read more »

It’s been a couple of years of great upheaval at Telegraph Media Group, not least for some of the journalists who have played musical chairs or lost their job in…

Read more »

Russian tech investor Digital Sky Technologies (DST), which took a controlling stake in its native Mail.ru portal in July, is amongst the leading contenders to buy the top Czech search…

Read more »

When Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK) last spoke on the subject, it told the market it hoped to sell off its Reed Business Information (RBI) B2B publishing unit as early as…

Read more »

The German engineering group has announced a 3 billion euro ($4.3 billion) overhaul that would cut about 16,750 jobs, sell off a unit and lower administrative expenses, Bloomberg reported. While…

Read more »

With the economy turning down and digital media investments supposedly drying up, one question occupying publishing execs’ minds has perhaps rarely been more pertinent - build or buy? In a…

Read more »

WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell’s persistence could finally pay off this week. After months of having its offers rejected again and again by audience monitor TNS Media Intelligence, the…

Read more »

Game Group is treating the economic turmoil like a first-person shooter - and it’s winning. The video game retailer got record £36.4 million pre-tax profits in the first half of…

Read more »

That trial couldn’t come quick enough. Controversial behavioural ad targeter Phorm’s half-year losses grew from $16.3 million (£9.04 million) to $24.7 million (£13.7 million) in the first half of this…

Read more »

This passed almost everyone by, so we’ll play catch-up today along with TCUK… Ryan Carson’s Bath-based Carsonified web agency has sold Dropsend, its premium web app for sending large files…

Read more »

NetPlay TV, an interactive gaming producer that runs roulette, bingo and other games across digisat and the web, took last year’s £900,000 loss in positive territory, reporting £1 million earnings…

Read more »

Looking to expand into Europe, lead gen and email marketer ClickSquared has bought UK online marketing services provider Rocket Science. Terms weren’t disclosed. Waltham, MA.-based ClickSquared says it had been…

Read more »

TNS’ planned merger with rival German audience researcher GfK may be dead, but the company is not about to give in to WPP Group’s advances just yet. The UK media…

Read more »

As we gear up for Tuesday’s EconMusic conference in London, we’ve assembled a list of the top five recent music deals by size. Given the tremors in the music industry,…

Read more »

Kindo, a genealogy 2.0 site we first wrote about in February, is being bought by online family tree giant MyHeritage. The Putney-based site, at that time, got funding from Ambient…

Read more »

The leading bid for Lloyd’s List B2B publisher and Datamonitor operator Informa has been scuppered by the state of the financial markets. Providence, bidding with Blackstone and Carlyle, offered 450p…

Read more »

Indie TV super-producer All3Media is buying Illumina Digital, a multimedia production house, in a deal that seemed to slip everyone’s radar. The outfit has made web and TV projects for…

Read more »