Costolo invested in TellApart back in 2010 along with Greylock Partners, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and SV Angel in a $4.8 million funding round. Twitter announced the acquisition of TellApart during its first-quarter earnings announcement this Tuesday.
Costolo previously invested in TellApart
Twitter says that the acquisition of personalization technology supplies it with “additional tools for cross-device identity, targeting and attribution, along with a talented team with deep direct response expertise.” TellApart used to be a big Facebook ad partner, but an uneasy relationship between the two companies may have influenced the deal with Twitter.
TellApart was founded by former Google executive Josh McFarland in 2009, and also raised $13 million in a funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures in 2011. Online advertising is a hugely competitive market, with big players including publicly-traded Criteo and start-ups AdRoll and SteelHouse. Start-ups have had trouble scaling in the sector, but Twitter has previously proved its willingness to acquire independent companies with its acquisition of MoPub in 2013.
Twitter making moves to improve ad revenue
“TellApart’s strengths in personalization, dynamic product ads, commerce data and with retail advertisers are strong complements to Twitter’s deep experience in mobile, understanding users and the app ecosystem,” said McFarland. “Together, we’re excited to bring the power of cross-device targeted advertising to Twitter, our clients and our ad exchange partners.”
The move should boost advertising revenues for Twitter, which the company needs after missing estimates today. The company also announced that ads for the site can now be bought through the DoubleClick bid manager in order to simplify the buying process for advertisers. Any move to make Twitter ads easier to buy from one of the most popular advertising tools in the world could have a positive effect on advertising revenues.
Twitter’s acquisition of ad technology and partnerships with important players in the sector could help the social network make some decent money from advertising. Commentators believe that results may not be seen for a while, but given an appropriate amount of time they could have a positive effect.
