“A core value for Twitter as a company is to reach every person on the planet. In 2014 we want to build a Twitter that is accessible to everyone,” says Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter in yesterday’s Q4 earnings call. Twitter reports having has 241 million monthly active users worldwide, up 30% from last year, with 54 million of those users in the United States.

With only 24.9% of U.S. consumers actively using Twitter, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor™, it looks like such an expansive reach is going to be a challenge for social media’s newest public company.

To tackle this feat Twitter mentioned several changes it has or will make to stimulate user growth. As Twitter users may have noticed, in-line social actions and media powered timelines were introduced in October which increased user interaction such as favorites and retweets by 34% in Q4. Search is also a quickly growing feature with 120% increase in total search year over year while simpler user onboarding experiences with native mobile signup are aimed to reengage inactive users. Another new feature that was introduced, and is a new concept for Twitter, was direct messaging. Messaging is up 25% since it was implemented.

The main device that users are accessing their Twitter accounts on is mobile. More than 75% of total ad revenue is being generated through mobile devices.

With all of this focus on growing their user reach, we have to ask; what is twitter doing for advertisers? According to Mike Gupta, CFO at Twitter, ad engagement is up more than 600% from the prior year. The increase in ad engagement is a combination of the improved prediction and targeting capabilities by twitter and the realized importance of the native ad by advertisers. Not only that but “for large branded folks, Twitter in TV is much a part of the conversation,” says Gupta “TV ad recall was up roughly 14% or so for folks who are using Twitter.”

For SMBs, there’s an apparent gap between SMB’s sentiments about Twitter and the company’s traction with small business advertisers. Twitter made little mention of SMB advertisers. According to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™, 44.4% of local SMBs consider social media to be a very high or extremely high future marketing priority. Not only that, but SMBs are already very heavily engaged on Twitter as users. Nearly 50% of SMB’s have a Twitter account or plan to get one in the next year. Of those who have one, over 78% of SMBs update their Twitter account daily or weekly.

Additional Key Highlights

–Full year revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.15 to $1.2 billion

–Employee headcount is now over 2,700

–International revenue represents 27% of total revenue

The post Twitter’s Q4 2013 Earnings Call: Big Plans for User Engagement, No Plans for SMB Advertisers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

“A core value for Twitter as a company is to reach every person on the planet. In 2014 we want to build a Twitter that is accessible to everyone,” says Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter in yesterday’s Q4 earnings call. Twitter reports having has 241 million monthly active users worldwide, up 30% from last year, with 54 million of those users in the United States.

With only 24.9% of U.S. consumers actively using Twitter, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor?, it looks like such an expansive reach is going to be a challenge for social media’s newest public company.

To tackle this feat Twitter mentioned several changes it has or will make to stimulate user growth. As Twitter users may have noticed, in-line social actions and media powered timelines were introduced in October which increased user interaction such as favorites and retweets by 34% in Q4. Search is also a quickly growing feature with 120% increase in total search year over year while simpler user onboarding experiences with native mobile signup are aimed to reengage inactive users. Another new feature that was introduced, and is a new concept for Twitter, was direct messaging. Messaging is up 25% since it was implemented.

The main device that users are accessing their Twitter accounts on is mobile. More than 75% of total ad revenue is being generated through mobile devices.

With all of this focus on growing their user reach, we have to ask; what is twitter doing for advertisers? According to Mike Gupta, CFO at Twitter, ad engagement is up more than 600% from the prior year. The increase in ad engagement is a combination of the improved prediction and targeting capabilities by twitter and the realized importance of the native ad by advertisers. Not only that but “for large branded folks, Twitter in TV is much a part of the conversation,” says Gupta “TV ad recall was up roughly 14% or so for folks who are using Twitter.”

For SMBs, there’s an apparent gap between SMB’s sentiments about Twitter and the company’s traction with small business advertisers. Twitter made little mention of SMB advertisers. According to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor?, 44.4% of local SMBs consider social media to be a very high or extremely high future marketing priority. Not only that, but SMBs are already very heavily engaged on Twitter as users. Nearly 50% of SMB’s have a Twitter account or plan to get one in the next year. Of those who have one, over 78% of SMBs update their Twitter account daily or weekly.

Additional Key Highlights

–Full year revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.15 to $1.2 billion

–Employee headcount is now over 2,700

–International revenue represents 27% of total revenue

The post Twitter's Q4 2013 Earnings Call: Big Plans for User Engagement, No Plans for SMB Advertisers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

On yesterday’s Facebook Q4 earnings call, COO Sheryl Sandberg reiterated a point she’s made repeatedly, “SMBs are the holy grail of online advertising and a segment that I’ve been particularly focused on throughout my career.” She then noted that Facebook has 25 million active SMBs who are engaged with their Facebook pages monthly. Despite this, Facebook’s real challenge was to upsell more of these SMBs into the active advertiser category. The company made a big investment to simplify its ad products, and that investment is now working to convert these SMBs into advertisers; of new SMB advertisers acquired in Q4 that started with pages, 72% started with Facebook’s most simple ad products.

BIA/Kelsey’s LCM Wave 17™ data shows Facebook pages at 52% percent penetration among SMBs, more than any other media channel used for advertising/promotional purposes. Facebook Ads only have 15% penetration rate, marking a huge upsell opportunity for Facebook. It was made clear on the company’s last earnings call that Facebook sees SMBs ultimately driving big revenues.

In the third quarter, Facebook revealed that mobile ad revenues accounted for 41% of ad revenues, precipitous growth considering that the company had only introduced its first mobile ad product in June 2012. Now, three months later, mobile ads to account for 53% of total ad revenue. The increase in mobile advertising revenue is represented in our LCM 17 data, in which 55% of SMBs said mobile advertising was a future marketing priority.

Another key driver of ad revenue growth continued to be the strong performance of Facebook’s News Feed Ads on mobile and desktop, which helped the company attract more advertiser demand. Mobile ad revenue increased from approximately $881 million in Q3 to approximately $1.25 billion in Q4, a healthy increase that benefited from seasonal effects.

Other Q4 and Annual Earnings Release Highlights:

— Revenue for the full year 2013 was $7.87 billion, an increase of 55% year-over-year.

— Daily active users (DAUs) were 757 million on average for December 2013, an increase of 22% year-over-year.

— Mobile DAUs were 556 million on average for December 2013, an increase of 49% year-over-year.

— Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.23 billion as of December 31, 2013, an increase of 16% year-over-year.

— Mobile MAUs were 945 million as of December 31, 2013, an increase of 39% year-over-year.

The post Facebook’s Q4 Big Wins: Mobile Ads and SMBs appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.