Twitter’s Overlooked Data Business Could Grow As Retailers Mine Chatter
When thinking about Twitter’s future, almost all the focus is on advertising. After all, 85% of its sales came from ads in the second quarter. But some observers believe Twitter has lots of room to expand its other revenue stream: data.
In the first half of this year, Twitter collected $32.2 million through its data licensing deals with authorized resellers, an increase of 53% from a year earlier. That kind of growth is nothing to scoff at, but it was overshadowed by ad revenue, which more than doubled over the same period to $221.4 million.
Twitter said in its IPO filing that it expects data’s contribution as a percentage of revenue to continue to decline, presumably as ad revenue continues to blossom.
