Twitter makes another interesting acquisition

Twitter has created another acquisition to make the social network’s ad school business — specifically within the space of native ads. it's notinheritable  Namo Media, a specialist in “native ad” content that integrates with the positioning wherever the ads square measure being viewed, with a spotlight on mobile ads. Twitter isn't commenting on the worth, however I even have detected from reliable sources that it's around $50 million.

Namo Media is closing down its standalone operation and integration into the Twitter-owned MoPub platform, the startup wrote in a very journal post asserting the news. There square measure around eight folks operating for the startup currently and from what I perceive most are connexion Twitter.

The idea of seamless ads fits in with however Twitter has been making an attempt to work up its own advertising business each on desktop and mobile versions — eschewing banners and ads within the margins in favour of tweets, and a lot of recently cards, that seem in a very user’s Twitter stream within the kind of Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts.

“Since we tend to noninheritable  MoPub last Gregorian calendar month, we've been operating to bring native ads to mobile app publishers so as to make a a lot of seamless and fewer intrusive ad expertise for users,” Twitter’s ad head Kevin Weil wrote in a very journal post asserting the deal. “We believe powerfully that every one app developers massive and tiny ought to be able to decriminalize their applications while not sacrificing the user expertise.”

The cards that Twitter has been integration into its stream are growing in terms of the varieties of options that they cowl — from buttons to urge folks to request a lot of data, to videos then on (with commerce probably returning shortly too?). thus what Namo can bring is technology and engineers/expertise to expand that set of options. One recent example enclosed adding a carousel-style feature to Namo’s ad format.

Given that Namo has engineered a business that works on native ads for numerous mobile publishers, this is often an extra sign of however Twitter has ambitions to play on the far side its own walled garden. that idea, incidentally, are a few things that Namo’s chief executive officer physicist Cselle has aforementioned within the past was a district that interested him.

Namo Media has place all of its effort into mobile ads — that is smart, since on a mobile screen there's a constraint for area, and thus even a lot of of a requirement to be a lot of artistic with however you gift data to users. It’s conjointly a business that has to this point seen not good margins, thus adding higher and richer experiences (like carousels) may lead to rises in CPMs for these ads.

This matches up well with however Twitter has been growing: the corporate, in its last profit-and-loss statement, aforementioned that it currently has 198 million mobile users, understanding to seventy eight of its users accessing the positioning from a mobile device. On prime of that, over seventy fifth of its ad revenues square measure returning from mobile.

In alternative words, it makes lots of sense for Twitter to be pressing on with a way to improve that business and its margins in it even a lot of. each Twitter and Namo are athletics to wherever the puck goes to be, thus to talk.

There are another fascinating twists here that are value mentioning. Co-founder Nassar Stoertz, World Health Organization leads Namo’s engineering efforts, had worked antecedently at Google, along with his last role there specializing in its case services, and former work together with time spent engaged on Gmail. Co-founder Tural Badirkhanli is additionally AN ex-Googler World Health Organization had hung out specifically in Admob. He has conjointly worked on AN email startup. Cselle conjointly had hung out at Google wherever he worked on — affirmative — Gmail (after it noninheritable  a previous startup of his, reMail) and Google currently. He’d conjointly within the past been VP of engineering at Xobni (now a part of Yahoo).

What I’m implying here is that whereas there's some clear talent and technology in ads, Twitter is obtaining a team of seasoned engineers. without delay they're going to be tasked with mobile ads, however World Health Organization is aware of what else they will do longer term?

San Francisco-based Namo Media was backed by variety of prime investors like Google Ventures, Andreessen Vladimir Horowitz, Betaworks, Trinity Ventures, urban center Ventures, Chung-Man tam-o'-shanter, Kevin Scott, histrion Toubassi, Ben Ling, Michael Levit, Tikhon Bernstam, and Paul Buchheit, and had raised slightly below $2 million, per Crunchbase.