Brief:

• Twitter, the social-media platform with 328 million users worldwide, formed an in-house creative shop called #Fuel to help brands create content specially designed for its micro-blogging platform, according to a news release by the company. Twitter is seeking to make the social platform more attractive to marketers as the company competes with digital-ad giants Google and Facebook and upstarts like Snapchat, per The Drum.
• Stacy Minero, Twitter's head of content planning, in the release described #Fuel as an "agile, rapid-response hub that responds quickly to creative briefs," with a particular emphasis on video ads. Its team will focus on content strategies for brands, creative ideas and editing video specially designed for the platform.
• "Video ads are Twitter's top-selling format, but not every advertiser has the time, resources or insights to create Twitter-specific ads," Minero said in the blog. #Fuel aims to optimize limited creative resources through the use of platform video ad experts.

Insight:

Twitter's decision to form in-house creative shop #Fuel comes as the company faces slow audience growth, even as the service gets almost daily publicity when politicians or celebrities issue a tweet. Twitter faces particular advertising competition from Facebook and Google, which earn more than 60% of digital ad spend in the U.S., according to eMarketer. Brands, who are looking to work directly with platforms when it makes sense, could see #Fuel as an opportunity to build better campaigns for Twitter, which is still considered an important platform for integrating a real-time element into digital marketing. 

#Fuel's emphasis is on creating video ads for marketers as Twitter begins to create more video content, which has become a bright spot for the platform. Twitter's live video audience grew 28% to 55 million people in Q2 2017 from the prior quarter with the addition of Major League Baseball games, Bloomberg News shows and Live Nation concerts. Twitter provided more than 1,200 hours of live premium video from existing and new content partners in Q2 2017, an increase from 900 hours in Q1 2017 and 600 hours in Q4 2016.

While Twitter's audience grew by a disappointing 5% to 328 million monthly active users in Q2 2017 from a year earlier and its ad revenue fell, video advertising was cited as a bright spot, though the company didn't break out its sales by segment. Going forward, the platform will continue to face challenges from other competitors like Facebook, which is also getting into TV-like premium video with its new Watch tab.