Twitter suffers advertising revenue slump amid pandemic and US protests
Twitter suffered a 23 per cent slump in advertising revenue in the second quarter due to the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest in the US.
The social media giant said today that advertising revenue was $562m, down 23 per cent year-on-year.
The company said it had seen a “gradual, moderate recovery” compared to March, however brands slowed or paused spend due to protests in the US in late May and June.
Chief executive Jack Dorsey also addressed security issues faced by Twitter last week, when hackers infiltrated the accounts of high profile users such as Tesla chief executive Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to promote a Bitcoin scam.
Dorsey said the firm has taken “additional steps to improve resiliency against targeted social engineering attempts”. This morning it was revealed that 36 of the hacked users have had their private messages infiltrated following the initial attack
Total second quarter revenue was $683m, a decrease of 19 per cent compared to last year.
However the platform’s monetizable daily active users reached 168m, a 34 per cent increase on the second quarter of last year.
“Despite the pandemic, brands have found innovative ways to join the conversation on Twitter to connect with their customers,” Twitter finance chief Ned Segal said.
“We have completed our ad server rebuild and are making progress accelerating our performance ads roadmap.
“With a larger audience and progress in ads, we are even better positioned to deliver for advertisers when the live events and product launches that bring many people and advertisers to Twitter return to our lives.”