Yahoo Buys Little-Known Startup AdMovate for Undisclosed Sum (YHOO)

Yahoo YHOO is looking to raise its ad revenue by acquiring AdMovate, a company fresh off the startup assembly line. In its formal announcement, Yahoo said that AdMovate has "created sophisticated technology that helps marketers reach their desired audience at the right time and place." "This is especially important for mobile ad experiences that engage consumers on smaller screens," the company added. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Related: Yahoo Announces Qwiki Acquisition It is no secret that Yahoo wants to become the king of mobile, just like its competitors, Google GOOG and Apple AAPL. AdMovate's existence, on the other hand, is a whole other story. With only three Facebook FB Likes, it might just be the best-kept secret in mobile advertising. On its website (which has now been turned into a one-page blog to announce that the company had been acquired), AdMovate reminisces about the good-old days. "When we started AdMovate in 2012, we built a product enabling advertisers to create and deliver personalized, hyper-local targeted offers through the mobile channel," the AdMovate team wrote on its site. "We've always been passionate about helping marketers engage their consumers at the right time and place through personalized messages. "In Yahoo, we found a team which shares our vision and is investing to make it real on a massive scale. We're thrilled to join Yahoo's advertising team where together we will execute that vision faster and address the most important mobile advertising challenges for our customers." That "personalized" and "hyper-local" ad setup sounds an awful lot like the one that Twitter obtained when it acquired Spindle, an app that has attempted to make social content more discoverable. Spindle is not that different from an ad platform because it can be used to tout sales and special offers from local merchants. AdMovate is one of many firms that Yahoo has acquired this year. The company recently added Xobni (a smart contacts app) and Qwiki (an app that automatically merges photos, videos and music into one mobile movie) to its collection. Louis Bedigian is the Senior Tech Analyst and Features Writer of Benzinga. You can reach him at 248-636-1322 or louis(at)benzingapro(dot)com. Follow him @LouisBedigianBZ