Opera Software spun off its mobile advertising, content distribution, and monetization businesses into Opera Mediaworks, the company announced on Monday.
The global mobile marketplace will work with more than 80,000 mobile sites and mobile applications, and brings together several recent acquisitions, including mobile advertising firms 4th Screen Advertising and Mobile Theory, which were acquired a year ago.
“Opera has been assembling a formidable set of assets, some through acquisitions, some through organic growth, over the last couple of years,” Mahi de Silva, EVP of consumer mobile at Opera and CEO Opera Mediaworks, told AdExchanger. “We felt it was time to create a brand around what we do for monetization and how we do that very differently than anyone else in the marketplace. We’re not an ad network or a piece of software that people license and run, but we’re a cloud-based solution that is an end-to-end monetization platform.”
The four service areas that are a part of Opera Mediaworks include ad mediation and exchange services; mobile ad agencies and networks; Opera Mobile store, a multi-platform mobile app store; and Opera Payment Exchange. Additionally, Opera announced the launch of Opera Mediaworks Performance, a performance-based mobile advertising platform.
Creating a new division will also strengthen the legacy business, de Silva said, as a focus on the core browser services within Opera Solutions will allow clients to better manage consumer interactions.
“The intent [of Opera Mediaworks] is to really bring together all these different monetization assets under one brand,” de Silva said, “and allow the entire ecosystem—the publishers, the developers, the advertisers, and the agencies—to have a one-stop shop experience and be able to deliver that scale.”
