New York — Twitter, the popular microblogging site, which has made generating ad revenue one of its priorities, is on a shopping spree and is trying to unlock its advertising enigma with its latest acquisition of internet advertising startup AdGrok, a company whose software is designed to simplify the creation and management of campaigns using Google’s AdWords search advertising service, the company announced on its blog Tuesday.
Beginning today, the ad company’s team will be functioning full-time on Twitter’s ad monetization platform, AdGrok founder Matthew McEachen wrote in a blog post yesterday.
“When Twitter approached us and asked if we would be interested in working on their monetization platform, we realized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we just could not pass up,” the AdGrok team said. “The fact that the Twitter team is both smart and user-focused only made our decision easier.”
Matthew McEachen, and Argyris Zymnis of AdGrok are now part of Twitter, while the other third – Antonio Garcia-Martinez – has joined Facebook.
Starting Tuesday, AdGrok has discontinued accepting new customers. It will also shut down its AdWords management business and wipe out its servers by June 30, concentrating entirely on enhancing Twitter’s online advertising technology.
“On June 30th, we will also unlink all customers from the AdGrok Google accounts and securely delete our databases. Performance data and campaign structures from AdGrok customers will not be shared with Twitter,” the company wrote in a blog post.
AdGrok, which is a Silicon Valley startup, now has to tackle the sticky task of untangling its customers from the Google accounts they are currently linked to. Here is what they had to say about that:
We are no longer accepting new customers and will cease charging our existing users immediately. We will shut down our servers on June 30th, after which the GrokBar will not be available. Uninstalling the GrokBar is easy: http://adgrok.com/help#uninstall
On June 30th, we will also unlink all customers from the AdGrok Google accounts and securely delete our databases. Performance data and campaign structures from AdGrok customers will not be shared with Twitter.
Please note that performance data and campaign structures from the campaigns you have run through AdGrok will not be affected by the shutdown of our servers; this information will continue to be accessible through your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts.
Further, “Performance data and campaign structures from AdGrok customers will not be shared with Twitter,” said McEachen.
AdGrok’s advertising platform deciphers the process of running internet marketing campaigns for small businesses that are not very familiar with the web. The AdGrok technology will probably find its way into Twitter’s Promoted Tweets ad service, which is similar in concept to Google’s AdWords. Promoted Tweets are Twitter posts formulated for advertising that appear in Twitter search results when they contain a search query keyword. Advertisers pay Twitter for Promoted Tweets when end users perform a specific action as a result of the post, such as clicking on it, re-tweeting it, replying to it or labeling it as a “favorite.”
Relieving apprehension regarding data, McEachen further stated that the data and structures from the campaigns previously operated through AdGrok would not be affected by the shutdown of its servers on 30 June. He also said the info would remain accessible via customers’ Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts.
And while those campaigns focus on Google Adwords, the new focus will be on building Twitter’s “monetization platform”. However, presently it is not clear what shape that platform will take, but its a good bet that it will have many of the same features and statistics found in AdGrok’d “GrokBar”, except tailored to promoted and featured tweets.
This acquisition of AdGrok is Twitter’s second inside a week as the micro-blogging site continues to tighten its grip on its tech ecosystem, which up to now has been something of a playpen for third party developers. The acquisition is rumored to have been for under $10 million.
Just last month, Twitter confirmed the acquisition of London-based TweetDeck for $40m, and it is reportedly geared up to release its own photo service as soon as later today.
Based in San Francisco, AdGrok was founded last year and was backed financially by early-stage investment company Y Combinator.
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