With 200 million active users, 400 million tweets per day, Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR), the SMS of Internet, has become the ninth most visited website in the world and hence is turning out to be an effectual platform for commercial blurbs among the marketers. According to a study conducted in June, 2014 by RBC and Advertising Age, the proportion of Promoted Tweets among the US dispensers almost squared up from 44% in 2013 to 80% in the first half of financial year 2014.
The second quarter of Twitter came off with impressive numbers wherein its revenue mounted up to $312.2 million, which was more than double of $139.3 million dollars this social networking giant had spawned the previous year. Conjointly its advertising revenue also amplified to $277 million dollars, 81% of which was generated from mobiles which denotes the lion share these commercials have in its annual remuneration. This huge leap in the advertising revenues of Twitter can be attributed to these Promoted Tweets – reaching consumers at the legitimate moment in the right context.
The Performing Factor Behind The Promoted Tweets
Adparlour – Twitter’s marketing platform partner deduced in its campaigning activity in North America that during the tenure between January to June 2014 the average CPM – Cost per unique thousand views – increased from $10.26 to $11.59. Also the CPC – Cost Per Click – and CPE – Cost Per Engagement -comprising of follows, replies, clicks and retweets increased substantially. The table depicts the increase in the CPC rates in the first odd-steven of the year (with an exception of May, seeing a decline of 1%) with the average CPC gleaned to be 25 cents in Q2,2014, compared to 11 cents in Q1,2014. Following this surging trend CPE saw the rising from 10 cents to a decent 28 cents during the same aeon.
The Advent of Promoted Videos
Twitter has come up with a new feature of Promoted Videos which is built upon Twitter Amplify, an add campaigner around the major TV events to match wits with Facebook’s premium ad video segment which is completely leading this segment. The videos will be encapsulated within the tweets using the Twitter card’s technology enabling the users to watch them on a single tap. The promoted videos would employ a Cost Per View (CPV) ad model wherein the endorsers will be charged only when a user views it.”By using Promoted Video, it’s easy for brands to upload and distribute video on Twitter, and to measure the reach and effectiveness of this content”, quoted the company in a blog post.The social network is launching a beta program for the advertisers to start using these promoted videos and would appear on the timelines alongside the updates from account user followers.
The Fake Followers
In an analysis of a research by Jason Ding of Barracuda Labs, he came up with the inference that lately fake twitter accounts have emerged in great numbers. These fictitious followers resemble the real Twitter followers by stealing their profiles, occasionally tweeting including hashtags and even follow each other to have a dozen of followers. The main motive of all this is to of course make profits, but the question arises how much they earn???.
“We know on average each fake account is worth $0.011 or 1.1 cent per following, and it was on average following 60 users, meaning each account has already made 66 cents in our study. Remember that each of them can be sold at least 2000 times without any hurdles, worthy of $20 each. Therefore, millions of fake Twitter followers can definitely generate a million dollars or more revenue,” Ding said.
The expansions
Twitter recorded an increase of 6% in its user base in the second quarter with 271 million monthly active users from the previous quarter of 255 million, although its total hearers are two to three times more than the active user base because most of them audience it without actually logging-in.
Adding to its revenues Twittter also came up with launch of app-install ads which allow users to download third party app using the Twitter mobile app. Facebook already accounts for 350 million mobile app installs in the first quarter of 2014.
With the debarkations of the Promoted Tweets, Promoted Videos and the mobile app-install ads we can soon expect a whooping uprise in the Twitter revenues in the coming quarters.
