Opera have announced their acquisition of Californian based AdMarvel this morning. Founded in 2006, AdMarvel brings together advertisers, publishers and networks to deliver contextual advertising while browsing. While the value of the deal was not announced (although Techcrunch are reporting it as being in the region of $8 million), the usefulness of the deal for Opera should be apparent.

Quotes from the press release:

“In our fast-growing industry, mobile advertising represents an interesting long-term revenue opportunity. Every month, nearly 50 million people access the Web using Opera on their mobile phones and together with AdMarvel, we think we can play an important role in the evolution of mobile advertising,” says Lars Boilesen, Chief Executive Officer, Opera Software.

“We are very excited about joining forces with Opera.  What started as a commercial relationship has blossomed into a wonderful partnership to serve the global mobile marketplace. Combining our monetization and analytics platform with the Opera browser and widget platform will create a new intelligent platform, where local and global advertisers can interact with a highly instrumented mobile audience,” says Mahi de Silva, Chief Executive Officer, AdMarvel Inc.

You can find out more via the Opera press release.