Yahoo buys mobile ad placement firm Flurry

Yahoo Inc has announced it will buy mobile ad placement firm Flurry in an effort to beef up its own mobile advertising.

Flurry is at the forefront of mobile analytics and so-called “real time buying,” a form of hyper-fasting bidding for mobile ad space based on the characteristics of the user.

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“We have reached a definitive agreement to acquire Flurry, the industry leader in mobile analytics,” Yahoo said in a blog post. It said the purchase “reinforces our commitment to building and supporting useful, inspiring and beautiful mobile applications and monetization solutions.”

The companies did not release the terms of the deal, but reports said Yahoo paid several hundred million dollars. Flurry, which had planned an IPO , said the deal would give it access to resources.

“With Yahoo, we will have access to more resources to speed up the delivery of great products that can help app developers build better apps, reach the right users for their apps and more importantly, make money from ads that look great and blend into the app experience,” Flurry’s CEO and founder Simon Khalaf said.

Yahoo has lagged rivals Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. in developing mobile advertising. Flurry is expected to kickstart its ability to generate interest on mobile.

Flurry monitors apps to gather analytics worldwide on 1.4 billion mobile users — information such as sex, age and buying habits. On average, it monitors seven apps on each phone to build a profile of the user.

When one of the users it tracks picks up a smartphone to, for example, play a mobile game, it can sell an ad in real time to appear on the phone in the infinitesimal time it takes for game to power up.

The prospect of high-speed auctions for targeted ads also drove Twitter’s acquisition of MoPub in September 2013 for $350 million.