Opera Acquires Mobile Ad Solution Firm AdMarvel

Opera Software has announced its acquisition of AdMarvel, a maker of solutions to improve the performance of mobile advertising.

In a Jan. 20 press release on the move, Opera said the acquisition will enable the company to expand its portfolio of products and services "to include highly scalable ad monetization services for Opera branded mobile products and services offered by mobile operators and content partners."

San Mateo, Calif.-based AdMarvel was founded in 2006 by a team of mobile veterans led by Mahi de Silva and has a broad customer base across the globe. AdMarvel CEO de Silva founded the company as Frengo and spun it into AdMarvel. He previously served as VeriSign’s senior vice president and general manager of Digital Content Services, among other positions in the high-tech industry. In its announcement, Opera did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

According to the Opera release, "AdMarvel strives to make mobile advertising an open ecosystem through better transparency of performance and simpler management of ad traffic to optimize revenue. AdMarvel’s suite of services is designed to put publishers, developers and mobile operators in control of performance and enables ad networks, agencies and brands to deliver better results."

“We are very excited about joining forces with Opera," de Silva said in a statement. "What started as a commercial relationship has blossomed into a wonderful partnership to serve the global mobile marketplace. Combining our monetization and analytics platform with the Opera browser and widget platform will create a new intelligent platform, where local and global advertisers can interact with a highly instrumented mobile audience."

“In our fast-growing industry, mobile advertising represents an interesting long-term revenue opportunity," said Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera, in a statement. "Every month, nearly 50 million people access the Web using Opera on their mobile phones and together with AdMarvel, we think we can play an important role in the evolution of mobile advertising.”