Twitter sells MoPub for $1.05bn in cash

News 7 Oct 2021 - 2 min read

Twitter sells MoPub for $1.05bn in cash

By Sam Buckingham-Jones - Senior Writer

Twitter sells mopub to Applovin for a billion dollars

"The sale of MoPub positions us to concentrate more of our efforts on the massive potential for ads on our website and in our apps," Twitter's Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal says.

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Tags: Twitter adtech mobile advertising

After months of mobile ad targeting headwinds, primarily from Apple’s iOS changes, Twitter has punted mobile ad unit, MoPub to focus on its in-app and website ad products. Twitter hopes to double revenue to $7.5 billion by 2023.

What you need to know:

Twitter has announced it has sold its mobile advertising unit MoPub to AppLovin Corp, a mobile gaming company, for US$1.05bn in cash.
The sale allows Twitter to focus on its owned and operated revenue products, and ad products within the app and website.

Twitter has sold its mobile advertising technology company MoPub to AppLovin Corporation for $1.05 billion in cash, shifting its focus to on-platform ads.

MoPub generated $188 million in revenue in 2020, but Twitter says there is “massive potential” for its owned revenue products and for the ads on its website and in its app.

“We plan to accelerate product development and replenish the near term revenue loss, with the goal of improving our time to market to deliver on our previously stated goal of at least doubling total annual revenue from $3.7 billion in 2020 to $7.5 billion or more in 2023,” Twitter CFO Ned Segal said in a statement.

Twitter bought MoPub for $350m in 2013. The sale comes as targeted mobile advertising faces increasing privacy headwinds. Apple has introduced operating system features that block cross-app tracking unless explicitly allowed by users, and is rolling out further changes.

Bruce Falck, Revenue Product Lead at Twitter, tweeted that the decision was “not made lightly”, but rather it would allow the platform to focus on performance ads, SMEs, and commerce.

Twitter’s share price rose a little over two per cent to $62.57 after the news, while AppLovin, a mobile gaming company, saw its shares rise nine per cent to $84.50 in extended trading.