Facebook on Wednesday announced it has agreed to acquire video-advertising company LiveRail for an undisclosed sum.
Founded in 2007, LiveRail offers a platform to help online video publishers find and serve ads. The company provides marketers with access to video content and information about where to show their ads. Its customers include Major League Baseball, ABC, A&E Networks, Gannett, and Dailymotion.
Facebook said it hopes the acquisition will allow it to improve video advertising for marketers and users.
"We believe that LiveRail, Facebook and the premium publishers it serves have an opportunity to make video ads better and more relevant for the hundreds of millions of people who watch digital video every month," Brian Boland, Facebook's Vice President of Ads Product Marketing and Atlas, said in a statement. "More relevant ads will be more interesting and engaging to people watching online video, and more effective for marketers too. Publishers will benefit as well because more relevant ads will help them make the most out of every opportunity they have to show an ad."
Facebook has been busy beefing up its ad options as of late. The company last month rolled out new ad preferences, giving users more control over what products and services they see on the social network. Facebook also recently launched Premium Video ads, which automatically come to life as users scroll through their timeline, and a mobile ad placement system called Audience Network, which lets advertisers extend campaigns beyond the site and into other mobile apps.
Meanwhile, Twitter earlier this week announced an advertising acquisition of its own. Facebook's rival purchased mobile advertising firm TapCommerce. Twitter said the acquisition will allow it to offer mobile app marketers "more robust capabilities for app re-engagement, tools and managed service solutions for real-time programmatic buying, and better measurement capabilities." Mobile users, meanwhile, can expect "better and more relevant ads."