It’s been an interesting 24 hours for Twitter. On the same day as its stock tumbled 18 per cent after it released a disappointing first-quarter earnings it has also announced a new deal with Google, where brands can buy Google ads and Promoted Tweets at the very same time.
During this year’s first quarter, Twitter has reported its weakest quarterly revenue growth as a publicly traded company. Here are some of the key numbers from the report:
- Revenue of US$436 million, up 74% year-on-year, but below its own forecast and the average analyst estimate of US$456.8 million.
- Q2 revenue guidance of US$470 million to US$485 million, well below the US$538.2 million expected by analysts.
- Monthly active users of 302 million at end of Q1.
- 89 per cent of Twitters’ ad revenues were generated via mobile devices.
Dick Costolo, chief executive officer of Twitter, said that “lower-than-expected contributions from some of our newer direct response products,” were to blame for the downfall.
This was the first time Twitter’s revenue fell sequentially, even Q4 to Q1 pic.twitter.com/AqypdeYCel
— Jan Dawson (@jandawson) April 28, 2015
“It is still early days for these products, and we have a strong pipeline that we believe will drive increased value for direct response advertisers in the future,” said Costolo.
Unfortunately Twitter’s Q1 results were leaked 30 minutes before the official press release. Research firm Selerity tweeted out the numbers early and have since denied hacking Twitter’s IR website. Twitter has blamed the Nasdaq for the leak.
Today’s $TWTR earnings release was sourced from Twitter’s Investor Relations website https://t.co/QD6138euja. No leak. No hack.
— Selerity (@Selerity) April 28, 2015
https://twitter.com/TwitterIR/status/593143226413887488
On the same day as the disappointing Q1 results, Twitter has also announced two new initiatives and acquisitions.
Google Partnership
Twitter also announced a partnership with Google’s DoubleClick platform to improve advertising performance measurement and attribution for Twitter direct response marketers.
As part of the partnership, Twitter will also make its inventory available through the DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM), making it easier for clients who prefer to centralise their buying through DBM to create and manage campaigns on Twitter.
Just announced: We are bringing Promoted Tweets to DoubleClick across mobile and desktop http://t.co/40Yage3daJ pic.twitter.com/DyZnVMuEWG
— Google Marketing Platform (@GMktgPlatform) April 28, 2015
This new partnership means that brands on Twitter who use DoubleClick will be able to see how their Twitter ads are driving sales.
Twitter’s blog post said: “We want advertisers to have insights into the rich canvas of actions beyond website clicks on platforms like ours (e.g., Retweets) and the role they play in determining a campaign’s ROI.”
TellApart
Twitter has also acquired TellApart, formerly a major partner of Facebook’s ad exchange, FBX. The predictive analytics company will help generate customised advertisements and will tailor Twitter users’ ads to match their Twitter behaviour.
https://twitter.com/twitter/status/593137879347372032
These new tools aren’t live yet, but will be available soon.
