There has been a steep rise in the number of internet marketing companies around the world. With the availability of numerous resources over the web to market one’s products or services, the internet marketing industry has seen a major boom in the past couple of years.

First, many marketing companies started to include online marketing services in their portfolio of services offered. But as we saw a burst of various social networks and, thus various techniques of marketing online, a variety of specialized internet marketing companies started to sprout.

These specialized companies use various types of marketing techniques such as Search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, email marketing, video marketing, etc.

Since there was a huge demand for such Internet marketing companies, the gap was filled by many small niche companies. And the numbers are still building up. But again there are some bigger players in the market that hold a big chunk of the market share. These big players keep growing and to take a bigger share of the pie, they have started to acquire smaller companies.

Such acquisition might happen if the smaller company has a good customer base, some unique algorithm or technique, or has become popular in a niche area. Acquiring such a company gives the bigger player access to the smaller company’s customers and technology, and helps consolidate the growing number of companies.

The major acquisition activity has been of traditional media and advertising firms acquiring boutique internet marketing companies. This shows that it is easier for the bigger company to acquire the internet marketing competencies by simply taking over a specialized firm.