AppLovin Closes Acquisition of Twitter’s MoPub Business For $1.05 Billion
MoPub, Twitter’s mobile monetization platform, is officially sold to mobile application developer and technology platform AppLovin. The deal, announced last October, closed on Monday.
The transaction was worth $1.05 billion in cash, and the MoPub platform, which includes advanced bidding, MoPub Marketplace, and network mediation, will sunset on March 31. Its dashboard and reporting will remain online until April 8.
In addition to MoPub’s core features, MAX further accelerates growth and improves efficiencies for app publishers while providing advertisers with greater reach and cost-effective pricing. By 2023, unified platforms are expected to process over $15 billion in annualized advertiser spend. Sen Sun, Vice President of Ads at Scopely, an AppLovin partner said,
The integration of MoPub and MAX will be a positive benefit for publishers and players alike.
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Over 45,000 mobile apps were using MoPub to monetize last October, reaching some 1.5 billion users worldwide, while over 150 demand-side providers representing thousands of brands and agencies had direct access to the AppLovin Exchange. Adam Foroughi, AppLovin’s Co-founder and CEO said,
Developers benefit from more features to help drive higher monetization opportunities and streamline workflows, leading to increased revenue for their businesses. We believe the power of this unified platform will be unparalleled in today’s market.
With MoPub’s suite of demand and supply-side features, MAX’s already robust capabilities and extensive buyer and bidder database will be improved. The SDK 11 release is due out on January 6 and includes new features such as Universal Creative Reporting, Ad Review, Native Ad Format Support, and Built-In GDPR Consent Flow, which is available on the company’s blog.
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Bruce Falck, GM of Revenue Products, Twitter said in a statement,
With the sale of MoPub completed, we continue to concentrate our efforts on enhancing ads across our platform. Our goal is to deliver faster growth in key areas and accelerate our product development.
Additionally, Twitter noted that publishers could migrate off MoPub in a 90-day transition period after the close. Customers will be able to directly receive assistance from AppLovin for their migration to AppLovin MAX.
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Advertisers Perception Survey: Publishers Positive About Policy Changes
Some publishers are constantly criticizing the changes made in Google ad policies. Although, according to Advertisers Perception Survey of the SSPs, the new policies don’t hurt the publishers in any practical manner.
The report included more than 150 digital ad sales and operational professionals. These websites include approximately 3 million visitors per month.
With Google ad policies switching to the first-price auction, nearly 4% of publishers claim that they are negatively impacted. Around 47% states that they see a positive change in business with the change in policies. Whereas, 43% states that it won’t change anything.
Similarly, Google ad policies changed the rules for unified pricing recently. A similar ratio of 4% of publishers saw negative impacts on business. 30% of publishers found the change appealing and experienced growth. Rest of publishers felt that the change won’t affect their business.
Advertiser Perceptions President and Chief Strategy Officer Kevin Mannion said: “Publishers tend to view [Google] with a white hat.” Publishers trust Google due to its innovative approach, end-to-end integration, and for the constant updates/access provided to the Adx demand pool.
Google ad managers demand is continuously increasing among its user. The reports of the third quarter from last year show the strengthening hold and leap in the position of Google in the market.
“Google is more dominant here than in any other ad tech category,” said Mannion.
Google ad manager and Amazon Publisher services compared on the bases of their fondness.
Almost 60% of publishers preferred Google while only 12% were in favour of Amazon.
The other preferred top 10 SSPs like OpenX, SpotX and Verizon media managed with a share of 3% to 6% publishers who think these solutions are the best.
When it came to the user database, Google Ad manager share was the largest at 81%. Around 46% claimed to be using Amazon Publisher Service. The other 14 SSPs have a portion of nearly 11% to 35% of the publishers who were reviewed.
Google locks up its spot of being the finest due to its technological progression. As per 78% of publishers, they pick Google due to “superior technology position.”
Since last year Google’s stature has increased among its publishers. Now, 90% of publishers think that Google Ad manager is a better solution, as compared to 79% last year.
Preference of SSPs among large to medium publishers.
Publishers are differentiated among large, medium and small publishers based on their user database. Google Ad Manager and Amazon Publisher services are preferred among all scale of publishers.
Publishers get compared on the basis of large and medium publishers. The results of the survey made by Advertiser Perceptions of SSPs highlighted some important influential factors.
To understand the working of stacking, and ranking of SSPs based on their popularity, let us take an example of Index exchange.
Index Exchange ranked third among all users. Nearly, 44% of large publishers are using it. Being popular with 44% of large scale publishers is extremely wonderful. However, it’s less preferable among small publishers(14%).
This leads Index Exchange to the third position of the stack.
Verizon media was ranked seventh among the large publishers, whereas it was ranked fourth among the small publishers.
There are other factors that can decide the ranking of SSPs.
Small publishers are those who have less than 20 million unique visitors. Small publishers use nearly 4 SSPs. However, any large publisher with more than 20 million unique visitors uses 6 SSPs.
Rebranding product can cost the user database.
Rebranding the product is not easy, as brands develop with time slowly earning their status in the market.
An example of a brand losing its popularity with rebranding can be seen by observing the decision of Verizon Media. Verizon Media rebranding Oath Media cost a massive loss of user database.
Similarly, AppNexus rebranding itself to Xandr Monetize has seen a tremendous loss of publishers. From 43% it came down to 19%.
Mansion said, “Verizon media is on a rebound.” People perception towards it is improving. There is a net 10 to 20% increase in its market leadership and its technology vision respectively.
OpenX also fell 11 points for its technical superiority. This year OpenX has lost nearly half of its users who thought that it is a market leader. The percentage decreased to just 36%. OpenX is the third most likeable solution according to the report.
This has nothing to do with the factor of rebranding.
Pre-pandemic point of view.
This survey took place in February, which was the starting of COVID pandemic.
During the epidemic users demands from the SSPs for the innovation has increased. The market is reshaping itself, publishers are appealing to SSPs to step up and portray cleaner advertising.
Publishers want to SSPs to work on the following factors:
- Bad ad troubleshooting – 64% of publishers view this as crucial.
- Prevention of counter-fitted inventory via ads -64% considered this crucial.
- Blocking of fraudulent traffic- 68% publisher demands it as a crucial step.
“Publishers tell us that they aim at zero tolerance for fraud and bad ads,” Mannion said. “They want their SSPs to be their trusted partners toward that end.”
