Opera Mediaworks announced that it is acquiring AdVine, South Africa's leading premier mobile-advertising network, enabling it to work strategically with advertisers interested in reaching mobile consumers on smartphones and tablets to the rapidly expanding market in the region. The move will allow Opera Mediaworks to reach Sub-Saharan Africa mobile subscribers, one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world with over 600 million mobile phone subscriptions that are predicted to increase to over 930 million by the end of 2019.
Opera Mediaworks will play an integral part in helping advertisers reach their audiences across a broad portfolio of popular mobile apps and websites via its portfolio of products, including Opera Mini browser and the Opera Max data-savings app for Android.
According to Opera Mediaworks, it plans to significantly expand to Africa via investments in people and resources across the continent, building on its long-standing relationship with AdVine. In addition, Opera Software said that it leverages extensive experience and traction serving the mobile market in Africa through its mobile browsers and traffic management products and commercial relationships across more than 30 operator partners in the region including various Vodacom, MTN, Airtel and Orange subsidiaries.
Mahi de Silva, CEO of Opera Mediaworks
Africa is positioned to become the 'mobile continent' with experts predicting an explosion in mobile data usage over the next five years. We are particularly excited about the hundreds of millions of African and global consumers who will be glued to the African Cup of Nations in 2015.
Sarah Utermark, CEO, AdVine
Mobile web usage in Africa is one of the highest globally and the continent's dynamic mobile industry remains an incredible place of growth. We're excited to be able offer unrivaled reach to brands looking to tap into the burgeoning African market as part of Opera Mediaworks' global mobile advertising platform.
