Twitter announced in a blog post on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Namo Media, a mobile advertising startup, in a bid to boost its advertising revenues and to complement its earlier acquisition of MoPub, a mobile advertising exchange business, for $350 million.
MoPub has become the foundation of the advertising business of Twitter, functioning as a middleman between advertisers and publishers in the mobile app.
“Since we acquired MoPub last October, we have been working to bring native ads to mobile app publishers in order to create a more seamless and less intrusive ad experience for users. We believe strongly that all app developers large and small should be able to monetize their applications without sacrificing the user experience,” says Kevin Weil, Twitter’s VP of Product.
On the other hand, Namo Media recalls that the company was founded on the belief that mobile banner advertising doesn’t work for users, advertisers or publishers as opposed to the opportunities from native advertising such as enhanced user experience, higher revenues and more valuable ad spaces.
“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,” Namo Media writes in a blog post on Thursday.
Twitter narrates that conversations with the team at Namo have proven that it shares the same vision with the latter, which is native advertising enhancing the condition of mobile app monetization for users, marketers and publishers.
Meanwhile, Namo Media believes that its technology combined with MoPub will bring about an even more powerful platform for its existing and future clients to generate income, while at the same time preserving an awesome experience for its users.
Among those backing up Namo Media are Google Ventures, Betaworks, Susa Ventures and Trinity Ventures. Based on reports, Namo was able to raise about $2 million of investment funds.
Research says Twitter is set to pay Namo Media $50 million for said acquisition, but the social media company remains mum about the price of the deal. With the acquisition, however, the standalone operations of Namo Media will have to fold and instead integrate with MoPub. About eight employees at Namo are said to most likely be part of Twitter.
