The mobile market is becoming hugely important for online publishers. After all smartphone shipments now outpace those of “regular†phones worldwide and the mobile market is projected to generate $400 billion in sales by 2015.
So Twitter’s announcement today that it plans to acquire MoPub, a mobile ad exchange startup, makes perfect sense.
TechCrunch reports the purchase price will be $3.5 million.
MoPub offers publishers the opportunity to monetize their sites using direct ads, house ads, an ad network and real time bidding through the “MobPub Marketplace.â€
The company claims it already serves thousands of mobile publishers.
Twitter plans to continue expanding MoPub’s existing advertising offerings to mobile publishers. At the same time Twitter hopes to integrate MoPub’s real-time bidding into its own ad platform.
In a post on the official Twitter blog, Kevin Weil, vice president of Revenue Product explained:
The two major trends in the ad world right now are the rapid consumer shift toward mobile usage, and the industry shift to programmatic buying. Twitter sits at the intersection of these, and we think by bringing MoPub’s technology and team to Twitter, we can further drive these trends for the benefit of consumers, advertisers, and agencies.
In a similar post announcing the planned acquisition on the official MoPub blog, CEO Jim Payne said the move would be a benefit to mobile publishers too. Speaking to the company’s customers he wrote:
It’s important to underscore that our commitment to you, the publisher, will not change. In fact, it will be strengthened. Twitter will invest in our core business and we will continue to build the tools and technology you need to better run your mobile advertising business.
Founded in 2010 by former employees of Google and AdMob, MoPub has nearly 100 employees worldwide and is focused on the mobile advertising market.
Founded in 2006, Twitter is a global microblogging platform with approximately 400 million visitors and 200 million active users each month.
Image: MoPub
