Twitter’s founder and CEO, Dick Costolo, made a recent appearance at The Economist Group Conference in San Francisco, and revealed that Twitter generated more advertising revenue from its mobile platform than its desktop version in the last quarter. The news comes following Twitter’s choice to implement ads into smartphone users’ timelines as of February of this year.
The success of the campaign not only highlights Twitter’s increasing mobile marketing success, but also reinforces the growing trend amongst users for accessing social media platforms through remote devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
Ironically, declaration of Twitter’s progress has come at a time when its main competitor, Facebook, has been facing criticism for its mobile marketing approach and increasing pressure to improve its offering.
Commenting on Twitter’s mobile advertising strategies, Costolo said: “We’re borne of mobile. We have an ad platform that already is inherently suited to mobile, even though we launched our platform on the Web and only started running ads on mobile recently.”
The successes and difficulties of the respective platforms demonstrate the benefits and the pitfalls of digital marketing through social media. Done well, mobile marketing can be a hugely beneficial tool in any digital marketer’s arsenal, but Facebook’s current plight serves as a warning that even the biggest companies can have difficulty getting it right.