Dive Brief:
- Mobile ad network xAD has been active announcing both a new funding round of $42.5 million as well as the acquisition of the WeatherBug app, as reported by TechCrunch.
- The xAD network is based around location services and using GPS signals within apps for geotargeted advertising.
- The WeatherBug acquisition offer multiple benefits for xAD. Because of its popularity, it adds more GPS signals for locating people to be served ads, and because of its weather data WeatherBug provides marketers a potential way to personalize advertise based on the weather a recipient is experience at the time the ad is served.
Dive Insight:
The acquisition by xAD mimics a move by IBM a little over a year ago when it acquired all of The Weather Company’s digital and data assets. In May, IBM tied Weather Company data with Watson’s artificial intelligence to offer personalized marketing based on hyper-local weather forecasts. The acquisitions by both IBM and xAD underscore the value in specialized data, such as location and current weather conditions, for marketers looking to send highly personalized messaging and offers as mobile use grows.
The deal also reflects a bigger trend in mobile advertising, as platforms and brands look for ways to increase the relevancy of their engagements for on-the-go consumers. For example, Facebook is beefing up its offerings around nearby recommendations.
For xAD, WeatherBug is a popular app ranking in the top five downloads on iOS and top 10 on Android in the weather category, per App Annie. According to xAD, it has 20 million unique users per month. The xAD network reaches 500 million devices and 100 million locations in total. The WeatherBug app provides extra value in that it’s only useful if GPS is turned on, so it’s likely that users will be sending location data back to the xAD network.