Yahoo Closes Flurry Acquisition to Boost Mobile Offerings

Yahoo! Inc. YHOO announced that it has finalized the deal to purchase Flurry, a mobile app-analytics and advertising startup, as the search engine focuses on becoming a “mobile first” company.

In July, Yahoo had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the company, which was reportedly valued at around $200 million, in a bid to boost its mobile product offerings.

The deal will enable Yahoo! to refine its mobile product offerings to advertisers by developing more effective mobile applications and monetization solutions. The deal will thereby help Yahoo! to beef up its stagnant position in the mobile advertising space, where it still lags behind the likes of Google Inc. (GOOGL) and Facebook Inc. FB in scale.

Flurry, a San Francisco-based company founded in 2005, provides mobile advertisers with mobile analytics solutions to leverage customer data and offer customized advertisements through banner ads and video.  Its technology monitors user behavior in applications by tracking taps, level completions, and buys in order to understand mobile consumer behavior.

As per Yahoo, Flurry's analytics solutions are used by over 170,000 developers across 150 countries and it is at present running on more than 1.4 million mobile devices worldwide.

Yahoo is making good progress on the mobile platform and the acquisition of Flurry would enable it to maintain this momentum by offering advertisers a better ad publishing and reporting platform to accelerate revenue growth across the mobile ecosystem.

Following the closure of the deal, the Flurry team will continue working at its present locations and its products will continue to operate and with Yahoo's support and investment.

Yahoo currently holds a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). Baidu, Inc. BIDU sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) is a better-ranked stock and therefore worth considering.