Twitter on Monday confirmed an earlier report from Re/Code that it has acquired mobile ad firm TapCommerce. The company focuses on mobile app “retargeting,” which, as far as we understand it, is a method of using trends gathered by an app’s users to entice those users to come back to the application. With a game, this could be executed through notifications about an in-game sale, for example, or through new banners that advertise other apps made by the same developer. The goal of retargeting is to increase the revenue gained for each dollar you invest in a single mobile app, and some of TapCommerce’s clients include Jack Threads, eBay, Hotels.com, Gilt, Ruzzle, PocketGems, and more.
Twitter is in the process of acquiring Tap Commerce, a New York-based mobile advertising technology firm, according to sources familiar with the situation. The deal is expected to be announced later on Monday. The purchase price was in the ballpark of $100 million, according to sources, though Twitter is not likely to announce the price tag when it announces the deal. Investors include RRE Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Nextview Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and Pereg Ventures. The company raised $10.5 million in a Series A round last November. Tap Commerce is in the business of “re-targeting” — that is, convincing customers to reopen all those mobile apps they have downloaded, especially the ones of the shopping variety. Among Tap’s clients are Fab and eBay. The company had also been working a lot with Facebook, which uses a ton of these kinds of ads in its mobile service, so it will be interesting to see what happens with all of that work.