U.S. microblogging site Twitter concludes its most important acquisition to date by acquiring a mobile advertising company, MoPub, according to Financial Times. The plan of the social network is to strengthen its advertising platform, before the listing of the company on the stock market, an event planned for the coming months.
The deal will allow automatic buying of ads on Twitter and increase the range of its partnerships with media companies.
The social network will be publicly traded, but before that happens, its representatives have proposed to work closely with broadcasters and develop a range of services for e-commerce. “Mobile is obviously key to Twitter as a whole and to our advertising platform,” said Kevin Weil, vice-president of Twitter’s revenue products. Weil says that buying ads in real time improves the targeting and relevance for both brands and users. “We look at it as a big bet on the mobile ecosystem. It’s growing incredibly quickly. We think mobile advertising is in the early stages, and Twitter and MoPub together give us the opportunity to help drive what mobile advertising becomes,” Weil added.
Emarketer estimated that Twitter will get more than $300 million from the mobile platform in 2013, ie more than half of its total earnings from advertising. MoPub acquisition would be the largest such transaction concluded by Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, before the company’s listing, an event expected to take place in early 2014.
According to a person close to the company, the agreement was valued at 16 million Twitter shares, between $300 and $400 million. MoPub provides 2 billion ads every day on various websites, including WordPress blogging platform, and in May it reported revenue of $100 million, 11 times more than in the same period of last year.
Accel Partners and Harrison Metal Capital are some of the largest investors in MoPub. The San Francisco-based MoPub has almost 100 employees.
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