TikTok ad traffic has jumped by 51.5 per cent year-on-year last month, while ad clicks on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram dropped by around 11 per cent.
The news comes as Twitter has recently rolled out its Blue subscription plan but, according to Similarweb, the signup page has attracted “well under one million” visits. It seems that despite the hype, Twitter users are not convinced on the much-lauded “Edit” button available to Blue subscribers.
The decline in ad clicks will also be a worry for prospective new owner Elon Musk and marketers. Overall traffic was up 4.5 per cent last month to 6.8 billion users. However, the decline in ad clicks might lead some to think that users no longer trust the ads they are served on the platform – or that they simply gloss over them.
Musk believes that taking Twitter off the stock market and moving it to a subscription model will boost engagement and make the app better for users.
“Whether the deal will really, truly close remains in question,” said David F Carr, senior insights manager at Similarweb.
“But if Musk really does wind up owning Twitter and taking it private, he will be buying a company damaged by turmoil he helped cause and that in any case suffers from many intractable problems, including its reputation as a hotbed of bots and misinformation. By focusing so much on the bot problem, he may have further undermined confidence in Twitter as an advertising channel, which was already under pressure due to economic and demographic forces, such as the affinity of young people for TikTok.
“One of the remedies Musk has proposed for Twitter’s business challenges is to shift to a subscription model, rather than an advertising model. This change could even help weed out some of the bots by positively identifying humans with a credit card in hand.”
