MoPub, a startup that helps mobile publishers manage their ad inventory, may have been acquired by Twitter, according to sources familiar with the deal.
We’re hearing that the company was acquired for $350 million in stock and that Twitter won out over other bidders like ad network Millennial Media.
If accurate, the deal is a significant acquisition for Twitter, which has been sharpening its focus on revenue generation — specifically by running advertising across its platform in the form of promoted Tweets, ad retargeting services and more. A MoPub deal would help Twitter specifically in the area of mobile advertising, an area where Twitter appears to be doing quite well already. Last year, Twitter started to make more money out of advertising running on its mobile platform than it did on its desktop product, according to this report in the WSJ based on stats from eMarketer. Twitter declined to comment directly on this trend or how much this signifies in actual revenue.
MoPub as a business works with a number of publishers to help them maximise sales and performance on their mobile ad inventory. For now, it’s unclear whether a Twitter deal would mean that Twitter would become the exclusive customer, so to speak, of this technology, or whether Twitter would use it as a way of branching out its own social graph on to other platforms, and other Twitter clients.
MoPub was founded three years ago by Bryan Atwood, Nafis Jamal, and CEO Jim Payne, who previously worked together at Google-owned mobile ad network AdMob. They were incubated at AngelPad and raised money from AdMob-backer Accel Partners, along with Harrison Metal Capital, Jafco Ventures, and others. They raised about $18.5 million total. Neither Payne, Twitter, nor Accel responded to immediate requests for comment.
The company’s products include the MoPub Marketplace, a real-time bidding exchange that helped advertisers bid for impressions the moment they became available. Back in May, the company said that it has reached a $100 million revenue run rate. A source familiar with the business said the company has about a 25 percent gross margin. MoPub customers include WordPress, Flixster, Ngmoco, and OpenTable.
Over the past few months, the company has also been rolling out updates aimed at making it easier for MoPub publishers to manage ads from multiple networks.
No comments:
Post a Comment