You may remember that popular micro-blogging site Twitter had acquired mobile ad platform MoPub for nearly $350 million in 2013. Eight years down the line, Twitter has decided to sell it to AppLovin, the game developer and marketing software company, for $1.05 billion in cash.
In a press release, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that the transaction increased their focus and demonstrates confidence in their revenue product roadmap, “accelerating our ability to invest in the core products that position Twitter for long-term growth and best serve the public conversation.” The company has a goal of generating $7.5 billion in revenue by the end of 2023, and the sale will accelerate the development and growth of its owned and operated corporate products.
As for MoPub, it is used by 45,000 mobile apps to manage their monetization and reaches 1.5 billion addressable users around the world. The platform has generated $188 million in revenue for Twitter in 2020, thus making up nearly 5.9% of Twitter’s 2020 advertising revenue and more than 5% of its total sales for the year. Once AppLovin integrates MoPub’s reach and product features into its own platform, it will maximize the growth of revenue for publishers through more demand and increased competition for each ad impression, and provide advertisers with expanded reach to hundreds of millions of new customers at market-efficient pricing.
What results will the sale have on Twitter? The company said that additional details will be provided in its third-quarter earnings report on October 26.
“We are excited by the opportunity to grow the AppLovin platform and further enhance our publisher monetization tools through this strategic transaction,” said AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi in a statement. “We welcome the MoPub team and together we will work diligently to combine the best of MoPub into the AppLovin software platform.”
The ten-year-old start-up has come a long way and moved beyond its initial goal of helping mobile apps get discovered and generate revenue, and has expanded into game development. It provides an integrated set of solutions to developers to grow their businesses and market, monetize, analyze and publish their apps.
