InMobi acquires Overlay Media, gains ability to customise ads to user's phone battery life

According to TechCrunch, Overlay Media was founded in 2007, and InMobi's interest in the firm is as much for its team of six data scientists as its proprietary Context Engine technology. 

InMobi plans to use its acquisition to "deliver personalised content to mobile users". 

Naveen Tewari, Founder and CEO at InMobi commented: "We are excited to add amazing talent to InMobi. This acquisition, along with Metaflow Solutions and MMTG Labs, will help us to continue to be at the forefront of delivering highly engaging content to consumers globally.”

The Overlay Media team will be based from the InMobi London EMEA office. 

According to Overlay Media's now largely defunct website, its context engine is capable of detecting the user's location and phone battery life to better tailor the phone's performance. Examples given are switching SMS's to voice-mode when the user is driving and deactiving services such as turning off Bluetooth when the user is home. 

Update: According to a spokesperson for InMobi, the acquisition will benefit the firm's mobile research which it feeds into its products. 

"We are therefore expecting an exciting year for product innovation and wanted to communicate to our partners that we are investing in this area and expect to demonstrate a return on investment in this area over the next 12 months," said the spokesperson.