Twitter: The IPO and Digital Marketing

This past week, Twitter completed its IPO to much fanfare and reception. In the first day of trading, price of shares almost doubled by closing time, indicating the overwhelming positivity of traders on Wall Street.  It’s interesting to note that in the meantime Twitter had a net loss of $69 Million in the first half of 2013 making it “among the highest-valued profitless companies.” While the IPO will solve this to some extent, Twitter needs to find ways to make money soon and since advertising is typically a large source of revenue for the company. This has big implications for digital marketing as highlighted in this article.

 

Firstly, Twitter should expand card features so that it leverages the app install and drives third party interest in developing Twitter Cards. This would bring card functionality into the main timeline allowing quicker in-app purchase and third parties could encourage users to promote their purchases vie their apps (much like Facebook does today). Secondly since Twitters follow structure isn’t reciprocal, it allows marketers to witness users interests as they evolve over time making Twitter’s social data much more useful. Thirdly, Twitter needs to find a way to fit in Real-time-Bidding since it allows marketers to target their audience more selectively and precisely. And lastly, there needs to be a focus on geo-marketing and location targeting. 76% of Twitter users access the site through their mobile phones. With geo-targeting, Twitter can allow marketers to target users based on current and frequently visited location. 

It’s clear that Twitter has many ways to ramp up its advertising revenue. With the recent IPO, the pressure is stronger than ever to monetize on ads and digital marketers for large companies should definitely be front and center of these changes.