Opera just announced that it would spin off its advertising business into a brand new entity called Opera Mediaworks. Fully owned by Opera, the new subsidiary will consolidate under one roof multiple recent acquisitions, such as Mobile Theory, 4th screen or Admarvel. The Norwegian-based company claims that the new entity is now the world’s largest mobile ad network.

But the real news might come from the fact that separating these two entities makes a potential Opera acquisition much easier. For example, a technology company may be interesting by Opera’s browsers, but not by its very efficient and expansive advertising network. It will greatly lower the bottom line.

As Opera’s browsers are free, a good share of its revenue comes from advertising in addition to partnerships with hardware manufacturers and telcos. After today’s clarification, it will be much easier to evaluate the health of these two sources of revenue.

Opera’s advertising unit powers 20 out of the top 25 global media companies. It reaches 300 million monthly unique consumers, representing more than 50 billion ad impressions per month and $400 million of revenue in 2012. The company provides a wide array of products for publishers, advertisers and mobile operators — what you’d expect from a leading platform.

Recently, the company announced that it would switch from its own rendering engine to WebKit. Shortly after that, the company confirmed that it would shrink its in-house developer team.

With today’s news, Opera currently has a lot of announcements to make. The company may even hint at new products during Mobile World Congress.

Crunchbase

• OPERA SOFTWARE

Company: Opera Software

Website: opera.com

Launch Date: 1995

IPO: OPESF

Norway-based Opera provides web browsers for the desktop, mobile, and other electronics such as the Wii. It also provides a service called Opera Link that lets you access bookmarks across devices. Opera is an independent Scandinavian company that’s been in the business of making web browsers since 1994. Our founders saw the internet as a way of making information free and available to everyone in the world, regardless of where they lived or how they got online. Ever since then, one...

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