Facebook

The latest addition to Facebook is LiveRail, an online video advertising company that provides premium publishers the technology to sell video inventory across all devices. LiveRail connects publishers to major ad networks, Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs), trading desks and exchanges. It uses a combination of real-time bidding and proprietary market data.

LiveRail will be functioning as a wholly owned subsidiary of Facebook and will be integrating its data with Facebook’s to improve user targeting and display better ads.

Video ads’ increasing popularity has propelled marketers to take serious note of it. Now, social platforms are catering to marketers’ video ad requirements. Plus, industry trends are leaning towards programmatic ad buying and Facebook’s acquisition of LiveRail underlines the importance of this trend. With LiveRail’s capabilities, marketers will now be able to harness the power of videos ads and will take Facebook’s user reach and user engagement to a different level.

Twitter

Treading on the path of boosting its mobile ad offering, Twitter has announced that it will be acquiring TapCommerce, a leading mobile retargeting and re-engagement advertising company.

After its acquisition of MoPub, Twitter says it has been working on improving its mobile advertising capabilities. Users are increasingly juggling different media and advertisers are spending to gain new customers. However, reviving inactive customers or retaining current customers is equally critical for good ROI.

Marketers using Twitter can now retarget and re-engage with users using TapCommerce technology. Twitter will be able to provide better capabilities for app re-engagement, tools and managed service solutions for real-time programmatic buying paired with sophisticated measurement capabilities.

Used with Twitter’s other ad solutions, marketers will now be able to drive ROI with mobile users both on and off Twitter.

Social media platforms, especially Facebook and Twitter, are constantly innovating and strategically acquiring smaller, niche companies to build up their arsenal. It will be interesting to see whether marketers can keep up with the ever increasing offerings of these two platforms.

What do you think of these acquisitions?