Must Read: Twitter’s New Mobile Advantage

The ad world is still trying to figure exactly why Twitter forked out $300 million for mobile ad exchange MoPub, but former Facebook Exchange product manager Antonio Garcia thinks it’s a “very big deal.” The reason? Cross-device ads.

According to Garcia the acquisition moves Twitter a considerable step closer to the “Holy Grail” of marketers: the ability to identify users across their devices, and to target them with relevant ads on all of them. It’s a capability many online ad companies have talked about, but few have come close to providing with any scale. Garcia says Twitter is about to change all that.

It’s about knowing that the same person who is browsing for a pair of shoes on Zappos.com on their work computer is the same person who’s whiling away a few minutes on their iPhone later that day while waiting for a friend. And also knowing it’s that same person who’s checking Twitter on their iPad when they get home that night. Threading together all those experiences (one desktop computer + two mobile devices) is something nobody actually does these days. There’s a tiny minority of companies who can even do this, but Twitter is one of them… MoPub lets Twitter monetize that magical fact.

Read the whole post here.