How Twitter is making money, 2,400 advertisers now onboard

On the day Twitter announced it had hired Bruce Daisley from Google as its first UK commercial director the company’s chief revenue officer Adam Bain has given an in-depth interview about Twitter and how it is making money.

He talks through how sponsored tweets really work and how Twitter is making money from promotions and advertising campaigns.

The interview, which you can watch below, throws up some revealing numbers including that Twitter now has around 2,400 advertising partners on board using its Promoted Tweets and Trends products as more an more agencies experiment.

That 2,400 figure is up from just 600 in June — a leap of 1,800 advertisers and it is still very early days for Twitter and advertising.

“At the end of the day it’s just 140 characters to a marketer but you can do a lot with 140 characters,” Bain said.

Bain also said that Twitter was seeing conversion rates of around 3%-5% compared with more traditional conversion rates of 0.3% to 0.5%.

How does this translate? He gave an example of a Twitter-led viral marketing campaign for the JJ Abrams Super 8 movie that generated an additional $1.5m million in ticket sales and boosted opening weekend by $13 million.