Staff Departures Raise Questions About Twitter Analytics

AdAge has published a story (subscription required) this week detailing large numbers of departures from Twitter’s insights and analytics team.

Layoffs and resignations—including a wave over Thanksgiving weekend—have decimated the insights and analytics teams at Twitter, according to people familiar with the matter, leaving questions about who’s still around to handle audience measurement and brand safety issues.

Such departures could have a profound impact upon brand safety on the social media platform. The article points out that the reduced staffing could make it difficult for brands that have abandoned Twitter or paused advertising spending on the platform to return.

Advertisers that have paused spending on Twitter have tended to be brand advertisers who are more focused on audience measurement and brand lift studies that the insights and analytics group would handle. Many of the remaining direct-response advertisers focus only on clicks and conversions they can attribute to their ads.

Another issue arises when considering Twitter’s Media Ratings Council (MRC) accreditation – with “almost every person on the team working on the audit now gone,” a source told AdAge, there are questions about whether or not Twitter can continue to meet MRC standards.

Metrics and measurement are vitally important to effective digital advertising, something Musk himself brought up on May 16, 2022, in an infamous response thread to then-CEO Parag Agrawal:

So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2022

Without proper measurement, brands open themselves up to viewability issues as well as the possibility of ad fraud. 

The Brand Safety Institute has a host of tools and resources to help brand safety and suitability professionals avoid these pitfalls, including:

• Videos detailing the MRC’s background and how the standards the organization sets help keep brands safe
• Videos with chief research officers at verification vendors
• Experts from Oracle Advertising and Group M teaching you how to improve your relationship with verification partners
• Guidelines for using identification tools to support measurement and attribution
• Insight into benchmarks and verifying performance
• Links to policies at the major social media platforms
• A demonstration of an always-on tool using distributed ledger technology to more accurately gauge campaigns

For more on the real-time brand safety case-study that is Elon Musk's Twitter, click here.

Image via business.twitter.com