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Advertising Twitter

Twitter ad revenue up a fifth as user growth returns

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

July 26, 2019 | 4 min read

Social network Twitter continues to grow, reporting a profit of $37m for the second quarter as its revenue and its user base grew.

TWITTER RESULTS

Twitter ad revenue up a fifth as user growth returns / Twitter

Total ad engagements were up 20% in a year, bringing it to $727m for the quarter (up 21%). Data licensing was up 4% to $114m. Revenue was split $455m in the US against $386m, internationally. The US grew at twice the rate of international at 24%.

It said video ad formats continued to show strength, pointing at the Video Website Card, In-Stream Video Ads, and First View ad formats. Data licensing and other revenue totaled $114m, an increase of 4%.

Average monetizable daily active usage (mDAU) was 139 million, compared to 122 million in the same period of the previous year. It was up 5 million on the previous quarter.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter chief executive, said: “Health remains our top priority and we are proud of the work we did in Q2. Our focus was on ensuring that our rules, and how we enforce them, are easy to understand. We also continued our work to proactively identify and address malicious behavior, resulting in an 18% drop in reports of spammy or suspicious behavior across all Tweet detail pages, which show the replies to any given Tweet on our service.

“In addition, we continued to leverage machine learning to deliver more relevant content, driving increased usage of Twitter on a daily basis, with mDAU up 14% year-over-year.”

Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer of 4C Insights, said: “Twitter has become indispensable to both consumers and advertisers. When something happens in the world, it’s reflected on Twitter in real-time. For brands, you need to be there if you want to be part of the conversation. At 4C, we’re seeing particularly strong growth with video on Twitter. The sight, sound, and motion of video advertising literally pops out of the feed and engages a captive audience.”

Mazen Hussain, director of paid media and creative at Croud, said: “Like other social platforms, Twitter’s main source of financial fuel is ads, and its revenue here continues to rise year-on-year. But advertisers buy based on the number of users they can reach - among other reasons – and if Twitter can’t fix a number of legacy issues, they may find themselves in hot water.

“The top priorities for the platform should be to improve the health of its feeds; ensuring that users can find credible information on Twitter and break free of abusive content; and making sure it continues to offer innovative ad formats that complement rather than disrupt the user experience so advertisers continue to buy.”

He concluded: “Ultimately, Twitter’s specialty is breaking news and connecting people to anyone on the platform, making it easy to strike up a conversation with anyone, from your friends to the President of the United States. If it keeps sight of this and continues to give the people what they want, whilst making sure it’s a safer and more enjoyable environment to be in, I foresee a strong future for the platform.”

The company currently boasts 4,300 employees and is hiring in the “health, conversation, revenue product and sales” spaces. Shares jumped 7% after the news landed.

Earlier this week, Twitter has named Gap Kim head of global business marketing. Kim had been at Facebook for nearly four years previously

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