Opera spins off ad business; quietly realigns structure on buyout talk

Opera today announced the spin-off of its mobile advertising business into a brand new fully-owned subsidiary, which the company claims is now the world's largest mobile advertising network.

Opera Mediaworks will consolidate both publishing and advertising services that the company has bought over the past year or so, as well as a new real-time mobile advertising targeting service that launches today.

OperaMediaworks Performance will offer advertisers a greater number of tools to acquire new customers by enabling ads to be targeted at a more accurate audience base.

The mobile browser company has spent more than $100 million in buying AdMarvel, Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising, and by spinning out these companies under one umbrella it makes the company's structure far simpler. And, by doing so and forming a whole new subsidiary, it makes parts of the business far easier to acquire, by offering up each division as a possible unit for sale.

This means, in a nutshell, that should a third-party company want to buy Opera's browser business, it can, without buying the new consolidated mobile advertising unit, and vice-versa. 

Opera remains quiet on recent rumblings that it may be acquired by Facebook, the social networking giant with more than one billion users.