Twitter’s (TWTR) new Moments feature was a big focus of the company’s third-quarter earnings call, as well as the company’s first television commercial. The Moments feature is designed to make it easy for people to find the best content Twitter has to offer, attracting new users to the platform.
Twitter stock owners have been reeling since TWTR’s user growth started stalling about a year ago. Moments is designed to reinvigorate that growth.
During its second-quarter earnings call, Twitter said that it would be launching a marketing campaign around Moments, in order to get more people to try the new feature and give Twitter a shot. This campaign is key to reaching the mass market audience management aims to attract.
But the first of the Twitter ads fails to deliver on that objective, which is bad news for Twitter stock.
Twitter Stock Still Plagued by Questions
TWTR CFO Anthony Noto said the objective of the Twitter ads campaign is to answer the question, “Why Twitter?” The company’s flagship product already has 90% brand recognition in key markets, but just 30% penetration.
Moments is designed to highlight the best content on Twitter, and Twitter’s first commercial was designed to highlight Moments. Instead, the TV spot only serves as a confusing mess of media.
The commercial shows a stream of content in rapid bursts with actual tweets from users. The problem is that TWTR tried to cram so much into its 30-second commercial that it’s incomprehensible. It does catch viewers attention with noisy music and graphics, but it fails to actually explain why someone should join Twitter.
The first two Twitter ads so far simply reinforce the company’s brand — something that’s already strong, according to Mr. Noto.
Investors beat the Twitter stock price down after CEO Jack Dorsey and Noto said they shouldn’t expect significant user growth until it can reach the mainstream audience.
The television ad was supposed to attract that mainstream audience to the platform. But the Twitter ad only served to reinforce the confusing nature of Twitter for new users, failing to attract new people to the platform or re-engage the billion users who have abandoned the service.
Expect More Twitter Ads in the Future
To be fair, perhaps Twitter’s marketing team knows exactly what it’s doing with this first commercial. As mentioned, it certainly managed to catch people’s attention. This could result in a surge in web activity around Twitter like web searches or visits to its homepage.
Twitter revamped its homepage for logged-out visitors earlier this year, making it more friendly for people that haven’t signed up for the social network yet. It includes the new Moments feature, which may be the optimal way for people to get to know what Twitter has to offer.
Additionally, management told Twitter stock investors during the third-quarter earnings call that the marketing campaign will also include paid search advertisements and digital video advertisements. People going to a search engine to learn more about Twitter could easily find Twitter’s targeted search ads.
While the first Twitter ad missed the mark, TWTR has the potential to make good on its promise to Twitter stock investors to reach a more mainstream audience. However, TWTR still needs to answer the question “Why Twitter?” Branding vehicles just won’t cut it over the long term.
As of this writing, Adam Levy did not hold a positions in any of the aforementioned securities.
