Twitter Acquires Namo Media for Native Ad Expertise

Twitter gave its mobile advertising division a decided boost Thursday with its purchase of native-ads expert Namo Media.
Although the financial aspects of the deal were not made public, sources told Tech Crunch Twitter shelled out roughly $50 million to acquire the San Francisco-based start-up.
The sources also said most of the eight Namo Media staff members will make the transition to the social media company.

Namo Media will shutter its services and take its knowledge and technology to Twitter’s MoPub platform to “offer our current and future customers a more powerful platform to generate revenue, all while preserving an amazing user experience,” Namo Media said in a statement announcing its purchase.


“We started Namo Media with the belief that mobile banner ads don’t work for users, publishers, or advertisers,” reads a Namo blog post . “We saw native advertising as an opportunity for publishers to create better user experiences, generate higher revenues, and enable more valuable advertising space. We built an advertising solution that lets app developers easily add native advertising to mobile apps.

“It’s because of that philosophy, and through our conversations with the MoPub team at Twitter, that we realized we’d be able to create better solutions together, so we’re making it official by joining the flock!”

The Namo team will be put to work building a native advertising platform for app developers at Twitter. The goal, the Namo blog post said, was to continue to “improve the native ad landscape for all mobile app developers.”

Twitter vice-president of product Kevin Weil said his company is “thrilled” to be adding the start-up to the fold.
He said the acquisition builds upon Twitter’s purchase of MoPub last October, as the micoblogging site looks to “bring native ads to mobile app publishers in order to create a more seamless and less intrusive ad experience for users.”