By Nishant Arora
Redwood Shores, May 14 (IANS): Well, Twitter is not making much money and its user-growth is crawling at the moment, but the micro-blogging platform, with 328 million monthly active users, is constantly trying to beat the blues, monetise more and earn more.
In the most recent quarter, 86 per cent of Twitter's revenue came from advertising -- especially Promoted Tweets.
Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users or to spark engagement from their existing followers.
According to Twitter, Promoted Tweets are clearly labelled as Promoted when an advertiser is paying for their placement on Twitter. In every other respect, Promoted Tweets act just like regular Tweets and can be retweeted, replied to, liked and more.
One of the advantages of Twitter is the real-time value it provides to its users.
"We have built our business around Promoted Tweets. We have helped advertisers get engaged with the right audience on our platform. If they get engaged with, we get paid and vice versa. The challenge is to make the right connection and we are constantly working on that," said Rob Pietsch, Senior Director of Sales at Twitter Inc, to a select group of global tech media here last week.
There is, however, more to the story.
For a seamless connectivity between advertisers and their target audience, Twitter distinctively depends on Oracle Data Cloud which provides sophisticated front-end solutions and user-friendly interface, and more, to make ads relevant.
"We have millions of active users and great data on folks as far as who you follow and who you engage with. We have a lot of first-party data but the data isn't perfect. Oracle's Data Cloud gives us better targeting to deliver better returns to advertisers," Pietsch told the media at Oracle's headquarters here.
"Oracle Data Cloud allows us to supplement our data with third-party data to deliver optimum results. We use Oracle solutions across products -- from front-end to back-end. We can track all different target groups across products," the Twitter executive noted.
Oracle last month acquired Moat, a cloud-based, digital measurement and analytics company that will complement Data Cloud's audience targeting.
"The Moat acquisition is good news as it gives us one more reason to say hey!, we are targeting the right kind of people via remote integration. Apart from this, the user-friendly interface in Oracle Data Cloud helps advertisers target their audience with ease," Pietsch noted.
Going beyond its traditional 140-character tweet, the social media platform is looking for fresh ways to bolster its revenues and live streaming on its platform is one such move.
After successfully livestreaming sports and other major events, Twitter has now partnered with US-based live-events company Live Nation to exclusively livestream concert videos.
The announcement is part of Twitter's new slate of live premium video content that would include MTV Awards shows and coverage of Fashion Weeks in New York, Paris, London and Milan.
Twitter has also livestreamed select National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), Wimbledon and National Hockey League (NHL) events last year.
Expected to go live later this year, Twitter has partnered with Bloomberg Media to stream news round-the-clock on its platform where advertisers can place video ads.
Amid the expansion plans, Pietsch says Twitter can use the data from public sources on Oracle Cloud to find new potential advertisers.
"If you were BMW and you wanted to reach Mercedes' owners on our platform, it would be great to be able to serve them an advertisement," Pietsch told the media.