65 percent of Twitter's ad revenue comes from mobile devices
Twitter has fewer users and less revenue than Facebook, but in mobile advertising Twitter appears to have dodged the problems that dragged down Facebook's stock after its public offering last year.
Sixty-five percent of Twitter's ad revenue comes from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, the company revealed Thursday in documents filed for its initial public offering.
That's about 65 percentage points more than Facebook generated from mobile advertising when it went public last year. At the time of its IPO, Facebook said it didn't directly generate any meaningful revenue from mobile, causing big problems for its stock.
Twitter said it's experienced strong growth in mobile ad revenue because user engagement, as measured by timeline views, is higher on mobile applications than on the desktop.
"We expect this trend to continue," the company said.
It's perhaps not surprising Twitter is doing better in mobile: The 140-character limit in its tweets comes from its origins as an SMS-based messaging system.
Facebook has since improved its mobile ad business. Last quarter it said it got 41 percent of its ad revenue from mobile devices.
Twitter broadly defines timeline views as the total number of timelines requested when registered users visit Twitter, refresh a timeline or view search results while logged into its website.
There is a caveat, though. Twitter said two types of ads -- promoted accounts and promoted trends -- are seen by fewer users on mobile compared to desktop. Therefore, "advertising revenue per timeline view may be adversely impacted even if total advertising revenue continues to increase," the company said.
Twitter started putting different types of advertising content on its iOS and Android-based apps in February of last year, and has since expanded to include ads on other mobile apps.
Twitter generated total sales of about US$317 million last year, the documents show, 85 percent of which was generated through ads. Facebook reported annual sales for 2012 of roughly $5 billion.
A major chunk of Twitter's users are active on mobile: three-quarters of the company's "average monthly active users," Twitter's IPO documents said.
Sustaining its number of users on mobile, and continually growing its advertising there, will be among Twitter's challenges in the years ahead, the company said in its filing.
Twitter will list its stock under the symbol "TWTR," on either the Nasdaq Global Select Market or the New York Stock Exchange.
Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com
Many marketers, agencies - and everyone in between - get caught up on bubble references and data points. They’ll use Facebook best practice as the only best practice for Facebook executions and only consider metrics and responses of the one channel they’re expected to deliver on.
A few weeks ago, our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison took it upon himself to tell companies and their CEOs where to go when it came to societal issues. It wasn’t an organisation’s place to get involved. Instead, he said it should be left to governments to solve societies challenges.
A study published in The Harvard Business Review found the time spent in collaborative activities at work has increased by over 50 per cent in the past two decades. Larger projects; complicated problems; tighter timeframes: These require bigger teams with specialised skillsets and diverse backgrounds, often dispersed globally.
In this bonus last episode of this new podcast series, BrandHook MD, Pip Stocks, talks with former ANZ group general manager of marketing, Louise Eyres, talks about the importance of thinking like a customer and using intuition to solve customer painpoints.
Informative blog. Xero is a well-known revolutionized accounting software, specifically developed to provide best User Experience and mak...
NavkarConsultancyServices
Xero evolves to fit a changing marketplace
>Writes article about how to show diversity in an authentic way>All featured opinions are from white women
Jennifer Metcalfe
Food for Thought: How can brands show diversity in an authentic way?
Excellent post, congratulations !!! - Prof Paulo Coelho | https://www.drpaulocoelho.c...
Prof Paulo Coelho
The B2C and B2B marketing transformation helping Invisalign win more smiles
Great article - but regarding "For a team to achieve their full potential, Edmonson also advises leaders balance psychological safety wi...
Sim
3 skills you need to drive better collaboration - Business leadership - CMO Australia
I would invest money in machine learning. I think it's important to do that. Don't you agree?
Polly Valentine
Metcash to use AI for promotional planning optimisation in liquor division