Something has puzzled me for the past few weeks: Why did Twitter buy CrossInstall? 1/X
2/ CrossInstall was doing well but the acquisition, at (from what I've heard) $50MM, was a relatively small deal for Twitter. Supposedly Twitter is trying to build an audience network and wanted CrossInstall's device graph + infrastructure.
3/ Twitter's ad tech is chronically ineffectual relative to Facebook's and even Snap's and TikTok's. Why not do a bigger acquisition? Apparently Twitter took a serious look at Liftoff, which is by all accounts doing exceptionally well.
4/ What I've heard is that Liftoff is looking for $1BN+, which is rich. But given how deficient Twitter's ad infra is, doesn't paying up make sense?
5/ It does, unless...you genuinely believe that advertising IDs are being deprecated in the near-to-mid term, which reduces the value of a device graph to near $0. The smartest people I know in mobile advertising all believe that this is coming sooner rather than later.
5.5/ (For more background on this, see, this podcast that I did recently with DataSeat CEO David Philipson: mobiledevmemo.com/podcast-how-a-…)
6/ If Twitter believes this, then the CrossInstall acquisition was probably for ad ops / engineering + sales talent and for short-term targeting optimization. (CrossInstall also specialized in playable ads, so maybe that's coming to Twitter?)
7/ And if that's the case, then $50MM is a great outcome for both sides! CrossInstall never raised any outside money, and Twitter gets a really sharp team of mobile advertising specialists to help reboot its ad ops + the DSP tech.
