Twitter snaps up Namo Media to dive deeper into native ads

Twitter keeps pumping money into its mobile ad business.

The microblogging company today announced that it has agreed to purchase Namo Media, a native advertising startup. Neither company disclosed the terms of the deal.

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Back in September 2013, Twitter bought advertising firm MoPub for $350 million to begin advertising outside its own properties. Namo Media will end its autonomous operations and integrate fully with the MoPub platform, the native ad company said in a blog post.

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.

Combining our technology with MoPub will offer our current and future customers a more powerful platform to generate revenue, all while preserving an amazing user experience.

Namo Media has focused largely on native mobile ads. That makes it a logical acquisition target for Twitter, which has a mobile userbase of around 198 million users — or around 78% of people on Twitter — according to the company’s latest earnings report. Over 75% of Twitter’s ad revenues come from mobile.

Unlike banner ads, which a lot of folks have learned to ignore, native ads attempt to match the context of peoples’ experience wherever they appear, blending seamlessly with (or even mimicking) the other content. The most widespread example of native advertising is on Facebook, which inserts sponsored posts into users’ news feeds. But lots of other platforms and publishers are readily adopting the new form of marketing, because it typically offers publishers more control — and often more money.