Twitter ad chief Matt Derella is at Advertising Week in New York City spreading the message that Twitter video advertising is the best platform to reach valuable audiences when they are most receptive. He says Twitter has never been more clear about what is our superpower.
Matt Derella, Global Vice President, Revenue and Content Partnerships for Twitter, discussed why Twitter is valuable for advertisers on CNBC at Advertising Week in New York:
Twitter Video Ads Now Generate Over 50% of Revenue
If you look back to our previous quarter our ads business is incredibly strong right now growing over 27 percent year-on-year and its broad-based all around the world. I think that’s because we’re continuing to innovate and bring new products to bear. Video, in particular, is now over 50 percent of our revenue and marketers are getting great results from using it.
I was just on stage here at AdWeek sitting down with the head of digital at Nestle and he’s talking about the fact that two of his biggest brands, DiGiorno and Lean Cuisine, Twitter was the number one platform among social platforms for return investment. As long as the results are there we’re going to continue to grow our business with our customers and continue to earn their trust.
We Want to be Really Transparent About Political Ads
Well, being completely transparent, I think Jack Dorsey (Twitter CEO) modeled this when he went to DC and actually talked to the regulators and the congressmen. We want to be really transparent about what we’re doing. There are some serious issues facing all services that are global in nature like ours we’ve taken some very tangible action just in the last few months.
You’ve heard about our Ad Transparency Center. This is a searchable database where anybody can go and see all the political advertising on Twitter and who is funding it. We’ve also introduced labels around all the political advertising so they’re clearly demarcated so you know and have trust in where that message is coming from.
Lastly, just on spam, we’re doing more than we ever have. Two times the amount of spam is being taken off the platform compared to just a year ago. This is what we’re talking to marketers about and content partners about to continue to get better.
Brands Can Target Very Specific Conversations
A big part of philosophically how we designed the platform is so that control goes in the hands of the advertiser. We have targeting that allows you to target just specific conversations. If you’re a brand who wants to connect with the NBA and all the conversation having around that that’s something that our tools allow to do.
I’m in charge of content partnerships and our content business has been flourishing. We’re helping partners grow their business. One of the great things about how we designed it is that marketers can actually choose the specific content that they want to align with and ensure that brand safety and brand alignment that’s so important for them.
We’ve Never Been More Clear About What is Our Superpower
The primary driver of everything we do is to help serve that public conversation that’s so unique to Twitter. Great content, whether it’s the World Cup highlights, that we had every single goal here in the US from the World Cup with Fox, is a great place for us to get video and bring that public conversation around it and it’s great for consumers. It also happens to be terrific for marketers who want to align with that passion here at Advertising Week.
I think for Twitter we’ve never been more clear about what is our superpower, we have the most valuable audiences when they’re most receptive. If you’re going to launch something new Twitter is the place to start because we have those valuable audiences when they are the most receptive. That’s the message we’ve been going with and we have the data to back it up. I think we have a very defensible position going forward with marketers.
We have to focus on the long-term and really what’s been incredibly encouraging is hearing from some of the most important influential CMO’s around the world supporting us as we make the decision to focus on the health of the service in the long term. Some of the decisions that we’re making, the hard decisions that might impact short-term metrics, but ultimately it’ll be the right thing for the platform.