Tag Archive for: Twitter advertising

Twitter’s US Ad Revenue Plummets 59% From Last Year

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A recent internal presentation obtained by The New York Times suggests that advertisers continue to flee Twitter despite controversial owner Elon Musk passing the CEO position to Linda Yaccarino. 

Although Musk has publicly claimed that “almost all advertisers have returned,” The Times’ data indicates that advertising revenue has declined 59% year on year.

The report also notes that the company has repeatedly failed to meet weekly sales goals by up to 30%, suggesting that efforts to slow the loss of advertisers and bring brands back to the platform have been ineffective. 

Why Are Advertisers Leaving Twitter?

Since taking over the platform, Elon Musk has reduced content moderation and removed restrictions protecting vulnerable communities such as LGBTQ+ individuals from hate speech. 

This has led to a surge of hate speech, extremist content, and explicit content across the platform which has in turn made advertisers wary. Many are uncomfortable with the potential for their ads to be shown alongside objectionable content.

Additionally, the advertisers which have been brought in during Musk’s time have overwhelmingly included adult-oriented advertisers such as online gambling and marijuana brands. 

The fallout has led many major brands, including General Motors and Volkswagen, to fully suspend advertising on Twitter. 

Making matters worse for the company, those who are continuing to advertise on the platform are cutting spending and avoiding the more expensive advertising options. Insiders at the company have stated that high-value placements like banner ads on Twitter’s trends page are often going unsold while major advertisers, including Apple and Disney, have significantly reduced their advertising compared to past years.

Is Twitter Doomed?

Twitter is losing up to 56% of its ad revenue each week compared to the previous year. The biggest question is whether new CEO Linda Yaccarino can turn this trend around. 

While Yaccarino is less controversial than Musk, advertisers may still be concerned that Musk owns and is still involved with the inner workings of Twitter. Additionally, it is unclear whether Yaccarino intends to increase moderation or will continue Musk’s laissez-faire trend which has contributed to the toxi

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Since Elon Musk’s Takeover, Twitter Has Lost 40% of Its Daily Revenue

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Since the much-publicized takeover by Elon Musk, Twitter has seen its daily revenue plummet by up to 40%. While Musk has been widely criticized for his behavior as CEO and management of the company in recent months, this info, reported by The Information, indicates things are also falling apart behind the scenes. 

Much of the lost revenue is attributed to recent news that more than 500 of Twitter’s top advertisers cut or entirely stopped advertising on the platform since Elon Musk’s takeover. 

Why Are Advertisers Pulling Away From Twitter?

The main issue raised by most major advertisers is Musk’s approach to content moderation. Musk has claimed to be a proponent of free speech online, indicating that content moderation should be handled with a light hand – if at all. 

As such, Musk has reinstated many previously banned accounts – including those of avowed white supremacists – and dismissed most of the staff responsible for content moderation on the platform. 

Understandably, this has made many large advertisers wary of how safe the platform is for their advertising. 

At the same time, Musk has also terminated much of Twitter’s sales teams, including those in charge of accounts with the company’s biggest advertisers. Similarly, engineers and data scientists who were working to improve the advertising service on Twitter have been dismissed. 

What This Means For Twitter’s Future

Unless Musk finds a way to reverse course and satisfy previous advertisers’ concerns, this could bode poorly for the company’s future. Users have already expressed frustration with having new features locked behind a paywall as part of Twitter Blue, indicating the premium service will not be able to make up for lost ad revenue. Meanwhile, Musk’s slashing of staff will make it difficult for the company to engineer new tools or services that generate revenue. 

With all this in mind, advertisers have every right to approach the platform with caution.

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Introducing Twitter’s New Carousel Ads

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Twitter is rolling out a new form of carousel ads which let you showcase between 2-6 images or videos in a single ad. 

According to the social network, the ads are particularly suited to helping businesses reach their advertising goal with a more immersive and interactive format which includes:

  • An edge-to-edge design
  • Third party measurement reporting
  • Accessibility support
  • New reporting features (such as swipes within the Carousel and breakdowns to measure individual Carousel card performance)

The ads have an edge on most other Twitter advertising formats because they allow you to approach an ad from a variety of different directions. You could highlight a variety of features and benefits of a single product, highlight a small collection of products, or tell a story about your brand. 

Why You Should Try Carousel Ads

Carousel ads have already proven to be a powerful tool on a number of other platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads. 

According to a Nielsen study cited by Twitter, using 3 or more assets in an ad format increases awareness by up to 20% and purchase intent by 7%.

Based on Twitter’s early testing of the ad format, that will continue to be true here. The company says carousel ads saw an average 15% increase in click-through rates compared to traditional single asset ad formats. 

Carousel ads for apps saw an even bigger boost, with an average 24% increase in installs.

Twitter Carousel Ads Best Practices

To help you get started, Twitter provided a set of recommendations and best practices for making the most out of carousel ads:

  • Use all of the available components: Including visuals, headlines, descriptions, and calls-to-action.
  • Tell a story: Craft a visual narrative with a beginning, middle, and end to keep viewers engaged.
  • Consider the audience: Show different product images to re-targeted customers than you would show to new, prospective customers.
  • Highlight the product and its benefits: The product should be visible and there should be clear, simple communication of benefit to the consumer.

Available Now To Everyone

The new ad format is available to all advertisers and marks a renewed effort by Twitter to create a more effective and enticing advertising platform:

“This investment in performance advertising also includes expanding the capabilities of our ad formats to enable advertisers with more options to show and tell their brand story, while providing a more intuitive, engaging experience for people on Twitter.”

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Twitter introduces new multi-faceted video ads

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Twitter has released a new type of video ad called the Video Website Card, which is aimed at helping advertisers drive traffic to where they need it most.

Twitter Video Ads

The new ad unit uses a multi-faceted approach to help streamline the process of directing users to your site, mobile app, or any other place you want.

It starts with an auto-playing video ad which Twitter says drove twice the normal engagement of standard mobile video ads in a beta test.

After the video is over, advertisers can include a clear call-to-action to drive viewers to your preferred location. However, if a user taps the ad while the video is still playing, it will continue to play while the website loads. Twitter claims this increases user retention by over 60% because it keeps users engaged while waiting for your site to load.

As you would expect, the ad unit also includes a customizable headline and a destination URL. You can also optimize the Video Website Card for your specific goals, such as video views, website clicks, or awareness.

The ad unit is already available to all Twitter users around the world, so you can start testing the new Video Website Cards today.

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Twitter starts testing subscription-based advertising service

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Twitter advertising

Twitter’s ad platform is reportedly in dire need of revenue. Judging by its latest advertising program the company is testing out, it appears that might be the case. The company is definitely getting quite creative in their attempts to find more business, at least.

Twitter is testing the idea of launching a subscription-advertising program designed to let smaller businesses and advertisers pay $99 a month to have their advertising automated by the company. The service would automatically promote their tweets, as well as run Promoted Account ads for the associated account each month.

“Instead of creating and optimizing separate Twitter Ads campaigns yourself, this program will do the heavy lifting. You just need to continue using Twitter as you normally do — Tweeting updates, links, and media that you want a larger audience to see. Then, the promotion of your Tweets will be automated,” as Twitter says on their business site page explaining the new program.

For now, the Twitter Subscription Ads Beta Program is invite-only while Twitter tests the waters. Based on the information available, it looks set to be aimed primarily at smaller advertisers who are using the company’s self-serve ad tools.

While this might sound nice to businesses interested in advertising but unfamiliar with the tricks of the trade, it’s important to know the program has some pretty big downsides. The biggest would be the amount of control you’re giving up.

Unlike normal ad campaigns where you get to select exactly what you’re promoting, participants in the subscription service will have little to no control over what Tweets are turned into ads or whom they are shown to. The company also notes that “not every Tweet that is added to your Promoted Tweet campaign will serve an impression, and the extent each Tweet is promoted may vary based on performance.”

If you’re thinking you might be able to fold the subscription service into your existing advertising efforts, you’ll also be disappointed to learn that isn’t possible. Any account participating in the program will lose access to Twitter’s self-serve ad platform. “In order to participate in this private beta program your previous ads account will no longer be accessible,” says Twitter.

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Twitter Struggles To Attract Advertisers Despite Increasing Revenue

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Source: Shawn Campbell

Source: Shawn Campbell

Twitter’s ad revenue and engagement may be going up, but Twitter’s advertising platform is struggling to maintain growth as they see fewer advertisers using their service to promote their content.

According to Twitter’s latest shareholder letter, ad revenue grew 18 percent year-over-year, reaching $535 million in Q2. Similarly, ad engagement shot up 226 percent and the cost per engagement dropped by 64 percent.

That’s the good news. The bad news is Twitter is “seeing a continuation of the trends discussed last quarter with less overall advertiser demand than expected. This is reflected in both our Q2 performance and Q3 outlook.

The social media giant says there are two reasons their number of advertisers is dwindling while earnings are growing:

First, there is increased competition for social marketing budgets, which requires us to continuously raise the quality bar on the advertising solutions we bring to market.

Second, while we have worked to drive higher ROI for advertisers (by leveraging our current user base, ad formats and innovations in targeting, creative and measurement), we’re still priced at a premium CPE relative to others. This has proven to be a headwind in growing Twitter’s share of overall social budgets and in our ability to grow faster in both video and performance advertising.

Ultimately, Twitter is going through growing pains and it is reflected by the loss of advertisers. While Twitter is charging more than most social platforms, it is struggling to maintain its active user base who have been largely unimpressed by newer features and changes to the interface on mobile and desktop.

Instead, advertisers are following users who are turning to platforms like Snapchat, which already has more active daily users than Twitter.

The company announced several new ideas to help recapture their audience’s attention and incentivize advertisers to use their service. Among them, it showed off a “new look and feel” to its marketing efforts that emphasize that Twitter is “where you go to see what’s happening everywhere in the world right now.”

Twitter is also heavily investing into live sports streaming with agreements to stream games from all the biggest sports leagues in the U.S., including the NFL, MLB, and NBA. The only question is if these decisions will reignite the spark that originally made Twitter one of the most popular social networks in the world.

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Twitter Expands Analytics Tool With ‘Audience Insights’

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Source: Shawn Campbell

Source: Shawn Campbell

Smart webmasters and marketers know analytics is the key to online success. Analytics services are the best way to know exactly how your site or content is performing and what you can do to improve it, but it has traditionally been more difficult to monitor your performance on social media through anything other than followers, likes, and retweets. Thankfully, that is all starting to change.

Twitter has operated an analytics service for users for over a year, but today they have launched a significant upgrade to its analytics tool which promises to give marketers and webmasters much greater insights into who their audience is and how to reach them.

The upgraded analytics tool, called “Audience Insights” offers a much deeper analysis of demographics, interests, lifestyle, consumer purchasing behavior, television viewing preferences, and even mobile carrier and device usage. The service works by matching data from Twitter’s Marketing Platform Partners such as Datalogix.

According to Twitter, the new Audience Insights will help brands improve their paid and organic marketing strategies on Twitter, and will be especially effective for advertisers as Twitter product manager Andrew Bragdon explained.

For example, if you’re running a campaign to increase awareness about a new cosmetics line, you can use this tool to learn about your potential customers on Twitter — the beauty products they’ve recently purchased, what fashion trends they’re interested in and even TV viewing behavior. Based on this information, you can identify the best segments to target within Twitter Ads, along with which creative — such as a Vine or video clip — your audience will find most compelling.

The insights dashboard offers easy and convenient tracking categories including gender, occupation, household income and net worth, home type, home value, marital status, education, consumer buying styles (premium brand vs. natural living vs. weight-conscious), favored television genre (drama vs. sports vs. comedy), type of credit card, and consumer good preferences.

The advanced analytics tool also makes it easy for marketers to compare their followers and organic audience against the full Twitter audience.

Audience Insights are already available for all Twitter advertisers and users of Twitter analytics. To access it, just visit ads.twitter.com while signed in, click on the “Analytics” menu, and select “Audience Insights”. You can also access it at analytics.twitter.com, under the “Followers” tab.

Below, you’ll find screenshots of each audience insights category as originally compiled by Marketing Land:

Overview

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Demographics

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Lifestyle

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Consumer Behavior

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Mobile Footprint

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Is Twitter Ads Worth Your Interest?

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Twiter imageWe are quickly reaching the point where every social media platform has their own advertising platform specific to their brand. Facebook has Facebook Ads, Google+ has +Post ads which display all across Google’s network, and of course Twitter has their own advertising platform, Twitter Ads.

As to be expected, each platform has its own upsides and drawbacks. But, if you can make it adjust your approach to the platform, advertising on the one of the largest social media sites of the moment is certainly an effective way to increase your reach and generate leads.

If you are thinking about expanding your advertising strategy to include Twitter Ads, Melissa Mackey recently explained some of the most important good and bad aspects to the platform you need to know before you get started.

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