Twitter Buys Mobile Start-up TapCommerce

Twitter and its ad strategy aren’t taking the summer off. Just hours after expanding its app-promotion ad program, the company announced the acquisition of mobile ad retargeting start-up TapCommerce.

Richard Alfonsi, vice president of global online sales at Twitter, said TapCommerce’s retargeting technology will be key to Twitter’s mobile ad strategy.

“Consumers are starting to use their phones not just to install and use apps, but for making purchases,” Alfonsi explained in a blog post on Monday. “Advertisers spend aggressively to get new users, but re-activating existing or previous users can provide just as attractive a return on investment.”

Twitter isn’t talking financial terms, but sources tell Re/Code the deal is worth roughly $100 million.

Promised some degree of autonomy under Twitter, TapCommerce will continue to help clients with real-time programmatic mobile ad buying across multiple exchanges reaching over 50,000 apps. 

TapCommerce raised $10 million in Series A funding, late last year. At the time, the start-up already claimed more than 50 clients, including more than 30 of the top 100 grossing apps.

Adding to its ad offerings, Twitter recently agreed to buy Namo Media and pair their respective native advertising technology. The addition of Namo followed Twitter’s acquisition of mobile ad exchange MoPub, last October.

MoPub, which reaches more than 1 billion devices a month, continues to reap rewards for Twitter. Omnicom recently agreed to integrate its programmatic ad platform, Accuen, with the MoPub exchange. The two-year deal is estimated to be worth $230 million.

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