Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) has said that it is seeing a significant revenue boost from video streaming a range of programming – from Game of Thrones recaps to National Football League highlights.
The streaming of video content (some of it live) has enabled Twitter to attract advertising dollars from deep pocketed companies such as investment bank Goldman Sachs and telecommunications powerhouse AT&T, to name a few.
Companies are buying video ads in the timeline or running brand campaigns next to live broadcasts on Twitter. Analysts say that Twitter is still dwarfed by Facebook and struggling to grow beyond 330 million monthly active users, but it’s doing as good a job as anyone at figuring out video content and live-streaming — a medium that has been slow to take off in the United States despite success in other parts of the world.
In the fourth quarter of 2017, the number of daily active video streaming users on Twitter grew 12%, marking Twitter’s fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year growth. The company also said that video advertising is now its biggest ad format and grew as a percentage of revenue in the same period.
Twitter’s stock has jumped more than 30% so far this year. When Twitter reports earnings next week, analysts expect to see a continued surge in daily active users and accelerating sales growth as brands become more comfortable advertising on the social media platform. Twitter’s push into video streaming began when the company acquired Periscope in 2015. The live-streaming app is mostly separate from Twitter but helped inform the company’s larger strategy concerning video products.
