Flipkart has announced the acquisition of mobile ad network AdIQuity for an amount that remains undisclosed. This move has been taken to beef up the advertising arm of the firm. Also, this acquisition is the first one made by the e-tailing firm this year.
Regarding this, Flipkart stated in an official statement that AdIQuity is known for mobile innovations and it has an extremely valuable experience in the ad space with a skilled tech team.
AdIQuity stated that all these aspects are a great strategic fit for the firm. AdIQuity started operations in 2006 as a search engine and it managed to raise $15 million till now from Sandstone Capital and Sequoia Capital. It provides solutions for advertisers such as geography based targeting, video ads and interactive ads.
The firm claims to serve around 25 billion ad impressions every month across over 200 countries. It also states to have over 15,000 publishers and application developers onboard.
The news of AdIQuity acquisition comes at the right time when the e-commerce portal giant Flipkart is looking forward to diversity into brand consulting and online advertising for vendors and other such fee-based businesses. It is aiming to do so in an attempt to increase its profitability prior to a potential public listing.
Flipkart’s CEO, Sachin Bansal is leading the push to advertising that will help the company to become an online publisher. The firm is hiring an all new team to handle this new initiative and it is also exploring opportunities that will help it in personalizing and creating advertisements to make them relevant to both advertisers and customers.
As mentioned above, this is the first acquisition made by Flipkart since the advent of 2015. Regarding this, Flipkart’s official statement claims that mergers and acquisitions are the prime aspects of focus for the retailer this year. This means that we can get to hear more such acquisition news from Flipkart by the end of this year.
