Zango, a Bellevue, Wash. based online advertisement distribution company announced earlier today that they would be acquiring SmartShopper for $9 million. SmartShopper is a tool that helps consumers find accurate price totals, consumer reviews, find product specs, hotel star ratings, store ratings, auction listings, etc.
Zango has been under fire for quite some time about the methods they use for mining consumer behavior data. Smart Shopper was a former subsidiary of HotBar.com Inc.
Zango also acquired HotBar.com in June 2006. The company is especially known for some of the most annoying pop-up and audio advertisements.
“Formerly known as 180 Solutions, Zango has landed in hot water for installing its ad-serving software without computer users’ knowledge and making the uninstall process difficult to navigate,” wrote John Cook on the SeattlePi.com Venture Blog. TechCrunch was the first to report the acquisition.
