Twitter announced the acquisition of mobile advertising company Namo Media for around $50 million to boost its revenue in the mobile sector.
Twitter's acquisition of native ad firm, Namo Media, is a step in the right direction to build the social network's ad business specifically in the area of native ads. Such ads feature content that integrate with the site where the ads are being viewed. Though Twitter didn't comment on the price, Todd Wasserman from Mashable said the deal went down for around $50 million.
The startup also announced the acquisition in a blog post and said it was excited about the integration. It will be closing down its standalone operation as it integrates into the Twitter-owned MoPub platform. All the eight people working for Namo Media will be joining Twitter, though exact numbers haven't been revealed yet.
"Through our conversations with the MoPub team at Twitter we realized we'd be able to create better solutions together, so we're making it official by joining the flock! At Twitter we'll continue to work on building the best native advertising platform for app developers with the goal of continuing to improve the native ad landscape for all mobile app developers," the startup said in a blog post, Thursday.
Twitter's ad head Kevin Weil said that the company had been working on bringing native ads to mobile application publishers ever since it acquired MoPub last October. This is an attempt to enable all app developers to monetize their applications without sacrificing the user experience.
"In our conversations with the Namo Media team, it became clear we share a vision for how native advertising can improve the state of mobile app monetization for marketers, app publishers, and users," Weil said in a Twitter blog post, Wednesday. "We're thrilled to add Namo Media's expertise and technology to the ecosystem MoPub and Twitter have already developed to continue building the best native ads platform for app developers and publishers."
Namo was successfully being run on its own. The startup just raised $2 million and boasts a lineup of top investors like Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Betaworks, Trinity Ventures, Susa Ventures, Chung-Man Tam, Kevin Scott, Garrick Toubassi, Ben Ling, Michael Levit, Tikhon Bernstam, and Paul Buchheit, according to Crushbase.
It seems like Twitter is on an acquisition spree. The micro-blogging site has also been making headlines for its plans to acquire online music firm SoundCloud. In April, Twitter acquired the maker of customizable Android lockscreen app, Cover, in order to enhance its mobile integration and also bought social data provider Gnip to better deliver aggregated data that can help various businesses find trends, breaking news, connect with customers and more.
