The social network added 9 million users during the quarter.

Retailers and other advertisers keep shifting their ad dollars away from Twitter Inc. For the second straight quarter, Twitter’s advertising revenue was lower than it was in the same quarter a year earlier.
[infogram id=”add47f90-e9f1-4d97-a577-502bfece116b” prefix=”TV4″ format=”interactive” title=”Twitter’s advertising revenue”]
However, there was some good news for the struggling social network—it added 9 million monthly active users, which is roughly the same number of new users it added in all of 2016.

“While we continue to face revenue headwinds, we made progress refocusing our revenue products on our strengths and began talking with advertisers about the return on investment gains from our daily active usage growth and better pricing,” said CEO Jack Dorsey during a conference call with analysts. “We believe this continued focus should result in positive revenue growth over the long term.”

The social network is in the midst of streamlining its advertising offerings by shuttering some ineffective formats and ad tools, Dorsey writes. For instance, Twitter officially killed the Buy button in January. And Anthony Noto, Twitter’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer, added that Twitter is plans to write down the value of TellApart, the retargeting platform it bought in 2015 for $479 million, to zero.

Because of those changes, Twitter expects its revenue growth to “meaningfully lag audience growth” throughout this year.

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“We believe, however, that executing on our plan and growing our audience should result in positive revenue growth over the long term,” he writes in a letter to shareholders.

For the first quarter ended March 31, Twitter reported:

  • $473.8 million in ad revenue, down 10.7% from $530.7 million a year earlier.
  • $548.3 million in total revenue, down 7.8% from $594.5 million.
  • 328 million monthly active users, up 5.8% from 310 million in the same period a year earlier, and up 2.8% from 319 million in the fourth quarter.
  • $61.6 million net loss compared with a $79.7 million loss a year earlier.
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