Twitter is flying at faster speeds these days, picking up new companies and expanding its services rapidly. Just one day after the micro-blogging site announced its acquisition of Gnip for its social analytics data, Twitter announced that it will offer mobile ads to advertisers with the help of partner MoPub.
Twitter acquired MoPub, a mobile advertising exchange, back in the fall of 2013. Since then, Twitter has been testing new ideas for generating advertising revenue alongside MoPub. It seems that the two sides have finally figured out the first step toward their mutual goal of turning Twitter into an advertising powerhouse like Facebook.
Previously, would-be advertisers had to go through a complicated process to get their ads on MoPub and Twitter. The advertisers used to have to set up their ads using a separate platform, a process that was outdated and slowed down business. Now, Twitter has finally streamlined the process.
For the first time, advertisers will be able to buy ads directly from Twitter, cutting out the middleman. They can also access MoPub's ad exchange. Many of the advertisers will be developers, who are looking to promote downloads of their mobile apps.
"Now you've got an immense amount of reach both on Twitter and off Twitter and we're really excited to bring them together," said Kevin Weil, the vice president of revenue products at Twitter.
Advertisers will have access to Twitter's 241 million users and will be able to extend that reach to the 1 billion devices to which MoPub sends ads. According to MoPub, it handles 130 billion ad requests every 30 days from Android and iOS applications. Seeing as mobile is a huge part of business these days, both Twitter, MoPub and the advertisers stand to make a lot of money using this new process.
Twitter reportedly gets more than 75 percent of its advertising revenue from mobile already. Now that advertising on Twitter will be even easier, the company stands to make a lot more money. It looks as though following in Facebook's footsteps with a few major alterations will work in Twitter's favor.
