Contact: Scott Denne
Twitter continues to focus on mobile advertising with the purchase of Namo Media, a native advertising specialist that brings better-quality ad formats to the social network and its mobile ad exchange, MoPub.
Maintaining a strict focus on mobile is Twitter’s best strategy today. Doing so keeps it mostly out of the crosshairs of Google’s ad business. It also plays to Twitter’s strengths – as most Tweeters log on with mobile devices, the social network can send those same users ads when they’re on other apps.
Marketers currently consider mobile a distinct advertising channel (with a distinct budget), and that’s good for Twitter. But they are increasingly thinking about the audience as a whole and the most effective way to reach it, regardless of where users are. That’s the logic behind several recent ad-tech transactions, including Oracle’s acquisition of BlueKai, Acxiom’s $310m LiveRamp buy, and Google and AOL’s respective purchases of advertising attribution vendors Adometry and Convertro.
If Twitter wants to benefit from that unified worldview, it can’t stick to mobile forever and will eventually need to make a strategic acquisition – such as the pickup of a broader ad exchange or major demand-side platform – to help advertisers reach its captive audience beyond mobile apps.
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