Ignition, New York: Twitter targets scale in 2012

Opening the Business Insider Ignition conference in New York today, Adam Bain, chief revenue officer at Twitter, said the business’ goal for next year was “all about scale.”

“Twitter is going to be a massive business, it already is. We have been thoughtful and deliberate. We want to get our ad products right and we have done so far.” The company is 800 people now, 500 of those added this year.

Whilst tactfully not saying so directly, it was clear that Bain saw revenues coming from online display. “Traditional online display is not seeing much growth…the portals are in a challenging place.”

Bain highlighted two major Twitter campaigns, the first of which also illustrated the power of TV plus social.

Audi ran a Super Bowl ad which dedicated its last few seconds to promoting it’s hashtag around the concept of progress. The Twitter conversation around “progress” went on for 3 months; Audi also had its most successful Q1 in the USA.

VW unveiled its new design via Twitter. 52% of those exposed to the message engaged with it (clicked through). “The first time the minority didn’t engage”, added Bain.

He pointed out that the hashtag and re-tweet functions were started by users not by Twitter. “We just saw what they were doing and made it easier.”

Bain was less convincing on how Twitter differentiated itself from Facebook, pointing to “massive engagement”, to a “unique differential in our mobile offering” and to Twitter being about “what’s happening in my world.”

More clear in terms of user interests was his example of tweets per second (TPS). Beyoncé set a new record recently at 8,000.