Yahoo to buy mobile analytics firm Flurry

Yahoo on Monday announced that it is buying Flurry, a company that specializes in mobile analytics and advertising. Terms of the deal were not announced, but Re/code, which reported news of the deal earlier, pegs the buy at "hundreds of millions" of dollars.

Flurry, founded in 2005, provides mobile analytics for more than 170,000 developers globally. According to the company's website, one of its aims is to allow app makers and marketers to place more-personal ads. The service gets insights from 1.4 billion devices a month.

That's an attractive proposition for Yahoo, which is in the midst of trying to turn itself into a mobile company. Since former-Google executive Marissa Mayer took the company's helm in 2012, she has overhauled Yahoo's mobile operations. Early into her tenure in October 2012, she promoted Adam Cahan, who had been with the company since 2011, to head a newly created mobile team. The company has since refreshed most of its mobile properties, including Yahoo Mail, Weather, and Finance, and introduced a new product called Yahoo News Digest.

Still, the company's mobile business is small. Yahoo does not break out figures related specifically to mobile revenue, other than to say the figure is "meaningful."

The move comes after Yahoo reported disappointing second-quarter earnings results last week. Display revenue, an important financial metric for the company, fell 7 percent from the same period last year.

"By joining Yahoo, Flurry will have resources to speed up the delivery of platforms that can help developers build better apps, reach the right users, and explore new revenue opportunities," Scott Burke, Yahoo's advertising technology chief, wrote in a blog post.

Flurry's current customers include Zynga, Skype, the BBC, and Snapchat. Burke said Flurry will continue to operate its current platform, while using Flurry's service to "make Yahoo mobile experiences better through products that are more personalized."