Twitter Inc. today announced that it has completed the sale of its MoPub mobile advertising business to AppLovin Corp. for $1.05 billion.

The deal officially closed on Saturday, Jan. 1, two months after Twitter and AppLovin first announced the sale. 

MoPub operates a cloud platform that enables mobile developers to make money from their apps by delivering personalized ads to users. MoPub became part of Twitter through a $305 million acquisition in 2013. The $1.05 billion for which the social network sold the unit represents a more than threefold return on the original purchase price.

As part of Twitter, MoPub grew into a business with annual revenue of about $188 million in 2020. However, the unit still accounted for only a small portion of its parent company’s revenue: Twitter generated revenue of $1.284 billion last quarter.  

When Twitter announced the sale of MoPub to AppLovin in October, the social network said the move will enable it to double down on its core advertising business. In particular, Twitter said, selling MoPub will make it possible to focus “more of our efforts on the massive potential for ads on our website and in our apps.”

Twitter earlier this year set a goal of at least doubling sales, to $7.5 billion, by the end of 2023. The company also hopes to speed up the pace of new feature development along the way.

AppLovin, meanwhile, will use the technology that it has obtained through the MoPub acquisition to strengthen its position in the mobile market. AppLovin provides software products that help mobile developers make money on their apps with ads, manage marketing campaigns and perform other tasks. The Nasdaq-traded company reported revenue of $727 million for its most recent fiscal quarter, up 90% year-over-year.

AppLovin is currently integrating MoPub’s mobile advertising technology with its own MAX mobile advertising platform. MAX enables mobile developers to sell ad real-estate in their apps through auctions to which they can draw bids from multiple brands. The platform also helps developers with related tasks such as optimizing ad revenue. 

AppLovin has already integrated several of MoPub’s core features into its MAX platform. The company plans to shut down three of the original MoPub platform’s core components, its network mediation, Advanced Bidding and Marketplace features, on March 31. MoPub’s Dashboard and Reporting features will remain available until April 30. AppLovin said that it will “directly assist customers” with moving from MoPub to MAX. 

MAX is one of several software products that AppLovin provides for mobile developers. It also offers AppDiscovery, which helps developers acquire more users, and Adjust, a tool for tracking the effectiveness of mobile app marketing campaigns. AppLovin generates another part of its revenue from its SparkLabs business, which provides ad design services and related offerings.

The sale of MoPub follows another high-profile acquisition in the digital advertising market. Last month, Microsoft Corp. signed an agreement to buy AT&T Inc.’s Xandr Inc. ad technology unit for an undisclosed sum. The deal represents the second acquisition made by Microsoft in recent memory to grow its ad business. The tech giant previously purchased a startup called PromoteIQ in 2019 whose platform enables online retailers to place product promotions from suppliers on their websites.

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