Twitter's first TV advert hasn't gone down very well with viewers

1 months ago

Twitter’s own executives have admitted the site has a bit of an image problem – that many don’t really understand it, or find it too confusing.

This week’s financial results further emphasised this point by showing that just four million new users have been added in the last three months. So now the company is going on a charm offensive, and it started with the company’s first ever TV ad.

Facebook has started doing TV spots this year, and plenty of the other tech giants do as well. Twitter then aired it during the World Series for maximum impact.

Except, the reaction to the ad wasn’t so great.

Text moving too fast, no clear message, general confusion. These were all things raised by those who saw it.

The ad was supposed to be promoting the new news section on Twitter, called Moments, but appeared to instead personify the core issue with Twitter: it’s a confusing service that a lot of people don’t truly understand.

Digital entrepreneur George Nimeh told the BBC he had been a Twitter user since 2007, and is a big baseball fan, but “still had trouble making sense of it”.

“I think Twitter’s fundamental problem is they’ve never been able to very simply and succinctly explain to people who are not familiar with Twitter what it is – and this particular ad does nothing to help,” he said.

Not a glowing reference for the new ad then, but in among all this, there was one tiny ray of light.

It’s a start, at least.