Mobile Marketing Industry Consolidation

It’s a well-known concept that new industries are often fragmented and that consolidation tends to occur as the industry matures. Since its humble beginnings more than a decade ago, the mobile marketing industry has evolved into a flourishing ecosystem of specialized platforms, technologies, and tools. Those involved with mobile advertising have had to perpetually adjust and refine their marketing strategies in order to continue to connect with users in a meaningful and relevant manner.

Considering that a modern mobile marketer may need three or more dashboards in order to obtain a holistic understanding of their campaigns, it should come as no surprise that the anticipation of industry consolidation is one of the major narratives circulating the mobile advertising space.

Displayed below is a list of prominent acquisitions related to mobile marketing technology that have taken place so far in 2014. To provide the industry with some perspective, we reached out to a number of respected professionals and invited them to share any insights and opinions related to this consolidation.

Here’s what they had to say:

“Mobile will be the biggest platform transition the world has ever seen, and if advertising and marketing platforms are not prepared for this transition, they will become increasingly irrelevant. The high number of acquisitions are further proof that mobile-first companies, cultures and technologies rule. Combining best-in-class mobile technologies can unlock synergies that, when done right, will ultimately benefit advertisers, publishers and consumers.”
– Will Kassoy, CEO AdColony

“With so many companies in a similar space and large breakdown of market share, it’s difficult to scale efficiently. Many large established companies have found this the time to acquire companies in a proven market to use their resources to create scalability.”
– Brendan, Lyall, CEO, GrowMobile

“Consolidation is a natural evolution of the mobile marketing ecosystem. There are a few winners emerging and those organizations will try to quickly acquire other companies in an effort to continue to build large businesses and beat competition. Ultimately, though, the best acquisitions have been and will continue to be those that help customers to the largest extent possible.”
– Ian Sefferman, General Manager – Inbound, TUNE (formerly MobileDevHQ)

“One of the hottest trends right now stems from the importance of driving the right users to a developer’s app and being able to drive the most revenue from their users. There is a lot of activity in the market right now on ensuring the right user is delivered the right engagement at the right time, as there are a variety of technology providers that are making strides to help developers maximize the Lifetime Value of their users. There is some consolidation in the mobile space around this trend, as marketing service providers are seeing that the promised future of an ideal and complete solution is much closer to reality.” 
– Changsu Lee, VP of Publisher Analytics and Insights, Tapjoy (formerly 5Rocks)

“To build a successful mobile solution one great component is just not enough, you need to come up with a whole ecosystem. Apple knew that when they came up with the iPhone. This is why they didn’t just lunch a handset but a complete ecosystem that included a handset + a billing system + a store + a cool tool kit for developers to create content. To build successful mobile marketing there needs to be an ecosystem too – of tracking, user profiling, media assets and access to marketers. In this very fast moving industry, it makes sense to merge the different components of the ecosystem, instead of trying to build them all from scratch.”
– Sigal Bareket CEO & co-founder, Taptica

“Closing the technological gap was the main reason for our acquisition of Apphome. In such a dynamic and fast growing mobile industry, we felt that app discovery was missing a rather opened and transparent technology. We could develop it ourselves in about 18 months but felt we must deliver faster as the demand was high.”
– Elad Natanson, Founder, Appnext

January

• YP acquired Sense Networks
• Facebook acquired Little Eye Labs
• Yahoo acquired Sparq

February

• Sungy Mobile acquired GetJar
• Apple acquired Burstly

March

• Adknowledge acquired Giant Media
• Unity Technologies acquired Applifier
• Lotame acquired Admobius

April

• Unity Technology acquired Playnomics
• Opera acquired Apprupt

May

• Unified acquired Awe.sm
• Appnext acquired AppHome
• App Annie acquired Distimo
• Microsoft acquired Capptain

June

• Facebook acquired Pryte
• Twitter acquired Namo Media
• Alibaba acquired UCWeb
• Amobee acquired Adconion
• Amobee acquired Kontera
• Opera acquired AdColony
• Google acquired Appurify
• Twitter acquired TapCommerce
• Perion acquired Grow Mobile

July

• Adknowledge acquired TriVu Media
• Facebook acquired Liverail
• Yahoo acquired RayV
• Twitter acquired CardSpring
• Yahoo acquired Flurry
• Marimedia acquired Taptica
• Palantir acquired Propeller

August

• TUNE acquired MobileDevHQ
• Rocket Fuel acquired [x+1]
• Beanstock Media acquired Onswipe
• Tapjoy acquired 5Rocks
• YouTube acquired Directr
• iQU acquired HoneyTracks

Author

Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she handled content strategy and marketing communications at several tech startups in the Bay Area. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned home to Charleston, SC, where you can find her strolling through Hampton Park with her pup and enjoying the simple things between adventures with friends and family.