Twitter acquired the mobile advertising company MoPub in 2013.
MoPub operated a mobile advertising exchange and tools for publishers and app developers. Twitter announced the acquisition in September 2013, before completing the deal in October of that year. The purchase was intended to strengthen Twitter’s mobile advertising business.
The acquisition was significant because mobile use was already central to Twitter’s audience. MoPub’s technology gave Twitter additional tools for serving advertisements across mobile applications and for helping publishers monetize their inventory.
MoPub continued operating as a Twitter-owned business for several years. Twitter announced in 2021 that it would sell MoPub’s business to AppLovin, with the transaction reported at about $1.05 billion. That later sale is sometimes confused with Twitter’s original purchase, which involved Twitter acquiring MoPub in 2013.