Dive Brief:

• Mobile ads remain the main driver of Twitter’s revenue, accounting for 86% of its reported $710 million Q4 revenue but down 2% year-over-year.
• In the earnings call, CFO Anthony Noto pointed out that Twitter increased the number of advertisers on the platform 90% year-over-year, reaching 130,000.
• Speaking on Twitter’s own marketing efforts, CEO Jack Dorsey said Q4 was the first quarter Twitter had an integrated marketing campaign that included TV and performance- based advertising.

Dive Insight:

In the call Noto explained advertising’s impact on Twitters’ bottom line, “Ad load has increased meaningfully since the beginning of the year. And it’s been driven by international ad load increasing more than domestic ad load. Our domestic ad load has also increased. That said, while we have increased ad load, we’ve increased it, because of demand. We’ve benefited from tremendous growth in a number of advertisers and spend per advertiser throughout 2015.”

Dorsey addressed the impact of new CMO Leslie Berland, “We’re very pleased with the impact that marketing had on the business in the fourth quarter. And more importantly, what we learned in applying that into 2016, as Leslie takes over the reins for us as our new CMO. We couldn’t be more excited to have her on the team and the expertise that she brings with the experience from American Express.”

One negative in the earnings call is that Twitter didn’t add any new users in Q4, and among core users actually lost two million to a new total of 305 million. Core users are defined as people who don’t receive tweets by text message. Twitter has 320 million total users, but since user growth has been a red flag for investors, the social media site is having to update the product to attract newcomers.

An example of a product update Twitter has pushed out to make the service easier to learn and use for newcomers is its timeline algorithm change that will display cuated tweets at the top of a user's feed from while they were away from the app. 

“We do feel there are a number of broken windows that are inhibiting growth,” Dorsey said on the earnings call, adding that Twitter will "refine our core service to make everything more intuitive." 

The goal is to give brands, influencers, content creators and users the tools to connect with each other and get the most out of the product.