Twitter intends to boost its advertising sales with the help of video, says a report.
A few days ago, Twitter fared badly with its revenue estimates for the first quarter. Moreover, active users only increased to 310 million from 305 million in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Twitter investors found such news quite unsettling.
Now, Twitter is not just worried about its user growth, it is also looking to deal with its advertising problem, reports The Wall Street Journal on May 1.
The reason for Twitter's shortfall in advertising sales is likely the "promoted tweet," which is the company's signature ad product. The sad news is that brands are moving away from promotional ads that come with typical texts, links and images. Rather, companies are now more into immersive advertising formats, such as interactive ads or videos, says James Douglas, the executive director of a social media agency under Interpublic Group.
Looking at the video front, YouTube is no doubt the largest network to amass profit by means of video ads. Facebook is likewise doing well in this arena.
"People are sharing and creating nearly three times more video on Facebook than they were a year ago," Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook operating chief, told WSJ. "This presents a big opportunity for marketers."
Twitter is also looking forward to using video to increase its advertising sales. The company started rolling out its own video ads in 2015, but advertisers are still waiting for Twitter to bring out better and amped up tools to reach its target users.
According to eMarketer, the strategy would be very important for Twitter considering the fact that the ad spending on digital videos in the United States is expected to grow by as much as 28.5 percent this year, which amounts to $9.84 billion in revenues.
In related news, Twitter now considers itself as a News app rather than a Social networking app. This is viewed as part of the company's effort to make Twitter more visible on the App Store.
At any rate, being categorized under News is something that Twitter deserves and it sure makes a lot of sense. In this day and age, Twitter is more popular for events unfolding in real time, which seems one of the app's best features.
