Twitter just acquired a marketing software startup, TellApart, that it hopes will help boost its bottom line. The deal terms were not disclosed.
TellApart is a venture-backed startup that had raised $17.8 million since its inception in 2009, including a 2010 Series A round. Dick Costolo, Twitter's CEO, was an angel investor in the company.
Basically, the TellApart acquisition will let Twitter more effectively target ads at ever-more-specific groups of people across platforms, whether they're using phones or desktops, as well as TellApart's ad specialists.
This acquisition was announced alongside a new ad sales partnership Twitter has formed with Google.
"Consumers now move fluidly between apps, devices and platforms, and performance advertisers are in need of more effective targeting and measurement tools that work seamlessly if, say, someone browses for products on a mobile device but ultimately makes a purchase on a desktop device," said Twitter VP of Product Kevin Weil in a press release.
What this will actually look like remains to be seen, but if you've ever looked at a backpack on Amazon only to have an ad for that very same backpack follow you to Facebook and everywhere else on the Internet, you have an idea of what this could become.
This is a potentially big revenue driver for Twitter. It means Twitter can get credit for ads that are clicked on other websites than its own.