As one of the main social media platforms in number of users, Twitter is highly used by marketers. In 2020, about 53 percent of marketers worldwide were using Twitter to market their business – only Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn had higher usage shares. About a third of marketers said they were planning to increase their use of Twitter in the near future, whereas 35 percent stated they will maintain the same use of the channel in the coming years. As social media marketing gains momentum, Twitter has a challenging task to stay ahead in this market. As of the fourth quarter of 2020, Twitter ad engagement was up by six percent in comparison to the previous quarter, while in terms of market capitalization of internet companies, Twitter only reached the ninth place within the United States in 2020. This was also reflected in the social media platform’s importance for marketers, with only three percent stating that Twitter is the most important platform, following Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
These particular figures aside, Twitter’s rising popularity has begun to translate to monetary gains, seeing that Twitter’s advertising revenue is on a steady rising path. Total ad revenue amounted to a total of nearly three billion U.S. dollars in 2019, a significant growth from the 2014 figure, when the company’s ad revenue stood at 1.26 billion U.S. dollars. Advertising is, by far, Twitter’s main stream of revenue, followed by data licensing. Overall, Twitter might have lost some importance in terms of marketing in comparison to other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram; however, the still growing number of users and increasing stream of revenue shows that Twitter is still a relevant platform to not only spread news but also as an advertising and marketing tool.
