Here’s How TapCommerce Will Give Twitter The Edge On Mobile Platforms, All For A Lowly Sum Of $100 Mn.
Micro-blogging network Twitter officially confirmed its acquisition of mobile ad start-up TapCommerce. The company has apparently paid about $100 million, but Twitter isn’t confirming the amount right now.
As first reported by Re/code’s Ina Fried, TapCommerce joined the Twitter family yesterday. It is hoped that TapCommerce will assist Twitter in improving mobile app install and engagement based ad delivery processes. Incidentally, Facebook too is attempting to bring in similar changes that TapCommerce will infuse in Twitter’s mobile platform.
How will TapCommerce help Twitter gain an edge in the mobile segment? Traditionally, delivering ads on the desktop platform was an easy task. Owing to cookies (the virtual kind, which are essentially tiny bits of information about the end-user), targeting ads became as simple as reading the cookies stored on the hard-drive of the user.
But, there are no cookies on the mobile platform and while the users are still not immune to data mining, the task becomes rather difficult for businesses to effectively re-target their ads. TapCommerce attempts to change that. The company is able to re-target using “large amounts of data coupled with sophisticated statistical analysis.” For example, an e-commerce app could use re-targeted ads to convince a lapsed user to return, maybe by promoting new sales and promotions, reported TechCrunch.
Interestingly, TapCommerce’s client base significantly coincides with Twitter’s. Moreover, TapCommerce, though began with eCommerce customers, now has a very wide array of customers from the gaming, travel, and lifestyle segments as well. Needless to say, these aspects will greatly expand Twitter’s appeal.
Twitter is quite positive about its mobile platforms. Owing to cross-platform seamless operability and the flexibility, coupled with the simplicity of hashing out short messages quickly on the mobile phone, Twitter’s usage has soared, especially via smartphones. In fact, Twitter recently confirmed that 80 percent of its ad revenue came from mobile. In other words, 8 out of 10 Twitter users use the platform majorly from their mobile devices.
This makes mobile ad delivery a top priority. No wonder the company has been on an inorganic growth spree that began with the acquisition of MoPub. The company, quite recently, laid its hands on mobile ad startup Namo Media for mere $50 million. Namo Media, unlike TapCommerce, offers Twitter extensive flexibility in the ‘native ads’ segment.
Couple Namo Media’s technology with TapCommerce and Twitter has a very powerful and intrinsic ad delivery platform that is specially geared towards the mobile ecosystem. Users can gradually expect to get ads that are not only native, but are highly personalized. Isn’t this a dream for any social media platform?
[Image Credit |Tumblr]
