• by Shankar Gupta , November 2, 2005

AtomShockwave Corp. today announced the acquisition of AddictingGames.com, a directory of popular and casual online games, including Bejeweled, Bookworm, and Tetris. The purchase adds five million uniques per month to AtomShockwave's network. Financial details were not disclosed.

AddictingGames.com aggregates links for online games from sites like PopCap.com and AtomShockwave's own games site, Shockwave.com in a no-frills interface, with ad space that was, prior to the acquisition, filled by third party sellers. After the acquisition, AtomShockwave's internal ad sales team will be selling ads on the site.

AtomShockwave Chief Marketing Officer Dave Williams said the acquisition is the beginning of an expansion initiative by the company, which is looking to corner the online market for short-form entertainment, dubbed "entertainment snacking" by AtomShockwave. "Short, high-impact entertainment," said Williams. "That seems to be where the market is heading from an online perspective."

According to Williams, the acquisition of AddictingGames.com is a complementary audience to AtomShockwave's own, comprising people who are looking for short-form entertainment. Williams said that of the 5 million unique monthly visitors to AddictingGames.com, only between 15 and 20 percent overlap with AtomShockwave's monthly viewership of 30 million unique users. The viewership of AddictingGames.com also skews slightly younger than AtomShockwave's own sites.