SINGAPORE — SingTel’s mobile advertising company Amobee yesterday (Sept 5) announced that it has bought Gradient X, a young Los Angeles-based developer of a real-time bidding platform for mobile ads.

With the acquisition, Chief Marketing Officers will be able to leverage on data to tap on the new Generation C consumers, said Amobee in its press release. Trendwatching.com defines the C-Generation as young creative types aged between 20 and 25, who propagate the Internet with consumer generated content in the form of videos, audio, photos or text.

Amobee did not reveal the price of the acquisition but technology news site TechCrunch puts it at “tens of millions of dollars”.

The added capabilities brought by Gradient X will allow Amobee’s new platform to offer advanced real-time bidding functionality that includes support for multiple ad channels and formats, including video and HTML5. Advertisers can then programmatically bid on digital inventory with constant price optimisation in real time, said Amobee.

Gartner Research Vice President Foong King-Yew said the acquisition shows Amobee and SingTel intends to be at the forefront of developments in the mobile advertising space. “Real-time bidding is an emerging hot trend in the industry, aimed at better matching between advertisers and consumers”, added Mr Foong.

Senior Director, Telecoms, Asia-Pacific for Frost and Sullivan Ajay Sunder said: “This is definitely a good buy for Amobee. One of the constant challenges for Mobile advertising is opacity as advertisers have no visibility on the pricing for different assets and how that may vary with time. Gradient X’s solution addresses that problem. With this acquisition, Amobee will be placed in a more competitive way compared to the other mobile networks.

Senior Analyst at Forrester Research Clement Teo said the buy will give SingTel as edge in Asian mobile ad spend with its access to a large mobile subscriber base but the challenge lies in that large companies such as Facebook and Google are also chasing after the same ad dollars from the Global 2000.”

Mr Teo said: “At first glance, (it) looks like a good move for SingTel as it drives its Digital Life unit forward but it would be interesting to see how all their recent Mergers and Acquisitions pieces fit together in the next six to 12 months.

CEO of Amobee Trevor Healy told TechCrunch that the acquisition is as much about filling a need at the company as it is about acquiring key talent. With the buyout, CEO Brain Baumgart (former Chief Strategy Officer at Adconian Direct), CIO Julie Mattern (co-founder and former Chief Technologist on the Rubicon Project) and CTO Michael Lum (former head of engineering at OpenX) will continue their work on Gradient X’s RTB (Real-Time Bidding) product at Amobee.