Twitter looks to boost mobile advertising strategy with MoPub purchase

Turning the focus briefly away from the TV set, the M&A department over at Twitter is turning its attention to mobile.

The latest target is MoPub, a mobile-focused advertising exchange self touted to be the "world's largest mobile ad server."

The micro-blogging giant confirmed the merger on Monday, highlighting interest in further development around optimizing ads to each user in real-time.

Kevin Weil, vice president of revenue product for Twitter, explained in a blog post that MoPub's talent and resources will be "to build real-time bidding into the Twitter ads platform so our advertisers can more easily automate and scale their buys."

The MoPub team has built a leading mobile ad exchange, and their focus on providing transparency to advertisers and publishers aligns with our values. We’ll continue to invest in and improve their core business. In particular, we think there is a key opportunity to extend many types of native advertising across the mobile ecosystem through the MoPub exchange.

MoPub CEO Jim Payne added in a separate blog post this afternoon that Twitter has been "mobile-first" in its strategy since day one, making the "two companies a natural match."

However, Payne also stressed that the publishing platform won't change -- at least for now.

"Twitter will invest in our core business and we will continue to build the tools and technology you need to better run your mobile advertising business," Payne continued.

Financial terms of the deal were not included in these statements, but TechCrunch is reporting that Twitter paid approximately $350 million for MoPub.