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Opera Software buys mobile ad company AdMarvel
We have just announced Opera's acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMarvel.Google and Apple have both recently bought their own mobile advertising companies, and I guess Opera needs to position itself to remain competitive in the future. It seems that mobile advertising is where everyone is seeing the big bucks in the coming years, and it seems like a good idea to expand into yet another area and diversify our business.
The big question is of course if you can make money from ads and at the same time make it useful to the user. Is it even possible to turn this into something the user will actually find useful?
Well, think about how we started making money from the desktop version: We introduced the search field which is now standard in most browsers, and offered a highly useful feature which we could also make money from. Basically, most of our desktop revenue is ad revenue, and this "ad-sponsored" feature is one of the most popular features in today's browsers.
If we can do the same thing on mobile phones, I think we've got a winner on our hands.
I don't know exactly what we are planning to do, but I'm pretty sure we are going to make it as useful and non-intrusive as possible.
Readers' comments 6
Left under the original article, as archived.
About this article
| Published in | A Journal from Behind the Trenches |
|---|---|
| Date | January 20, 2010 |
| Author | Haavard |
| Tags | acquisition, advertising, opera, admarvel |
| Original | Internet Archive |
tomassplatchWednesday, January 20, 2010 5:06:15 PM
However, implementation will have to be as unobtrusive as possible for users not to label Opera as "adware" or "Ad-powered".
Rafael LuikWednesday, January 20, 2010 5:22:13 PM
endless loveWednesday, January 20, 2010 5:22:48 PM
Daniel HendrycksWednesday, January 20, 2010 10:05:37 PM
Originally posted by tomassplatch:
Ditto. Tamil said Opera can't take donations because it's illegal. Piriform can, and it's not an organization. How does that work?
Charles SchlossThursday, January 21, 2010 5:32:37 AM
Cutting SpoonFriday, January 22, 2010 7:52:22 PM
On things like donations, the specifics are extensive. Long story short, it depends on 1) the location of your operation and 2) the exact type of operation that you have registered as. If someone in Opera Legal says NO, that's that.