Who is Twitter Buying Now?

In its advertising blog, Twitter TWTR announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Namo Media, a specialist in "native ads". Twitter VP of product, Kevin Weil wrote, "In our conversations with the Namo Media team, it became clear we share a vision for how native advertising can improve the state of mobile app monetization for marketers, app publishers, and users." The deal with Namo follows last October's acquisition of MoPub and is another step toward Twitter's goal to "create a more seamless and less intrusive ad experience for users". In addition to technology and expertise, a notable asset Namo will bring to the table is its recently added "carousel-style" ad feature which allows users to cycle through ads with a simple swipe to either side. The ads featured in the carousel format can optimized so that the ad the user is most likely to interact with shows up first. The addition of Namo signifies Twitter's further attempts to improve its margins on mobile advertising which makes sense seeing as 78 percent of Twitter's users access the site through a mobile device. Moreover, the company reported that over 75 percent of its ad revenue comes from mobile. Traders appear to be reacting favorably to the news as Twitter's shares were trading up ~2 percent, at last check.