• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, October 9, 2014

When Twitter announced this morning that it is launching a new set of native ad features -- using Namo Media’s technology, which it acquired in June -- my first thought was not of Twitter, MoPub, or really any type of advertising. My first thought was about the weather.

You know, weather … as in weather.com, and the Bloomberg Businessweek cover story analyzing weather.com’s “clickbait” transformation.  The story “suggests Weather Channel has moved more in the direction of BuzzFeed than the CNN of weather,” writes Media Daily News.

And BuzzFeed relies heavily on native advertising, which brings us full circle -- back to the Twitter blog post introducing “a new set of features that make it easier for publishers to create and manage native ads from any advertiser via MoPub.”

MoPub, and mobile advertising in general, played a key role in Twitter’s solid Q2 earnings report. And as today’s news suggests, MoPub remains an area of focus. Twitter’s decision to buy Namo Media, a native ad company, and integrate its tech into MoPub also speaks to the strengthening marriage between native and programmatic advertising.

Then again, I would contend that any type of advertising on Twitter -- especially on mobile devices -- is “native” by nature, so I won’t go too far into calling this a “win” for the pro “native programatic” crowd. I don’t think Twitter’s meshing of Namo and MoPub tech makes ads on Twitter any more native.

One more thing: It did not seem to take long for Twitter to integrate Namo’s tech after the acquisition. After the slew of ad tech M&A activity we saw this summer, it will be interesting to see how each buyer moves forward.

For example, AOL last week announced the launch of a data management platform (DMP) that will feature multi-touch attribution technology from Convertro, the consumer tracking platform it acquired in May. How Rocket Fuel combines its own DSP (demand-side platform) with [x+1]’s marketing tech remains to be seen, though Rocket Fuel plans to do so soon, potentially by Q4 2014.

Those are just a couple of examples, but there are others, including whether or not Epsilon becomes a true power player in the programmatic ad space following Alliance Data Systems’ acquisition of Conversant.