This Saturday (March 21st) Twitter celebrates its ninth Birthday. To mark the occasion, Marin Software’s Jon Myers looks at the growth of the social platform and the impact it’s had on advertising.

“Ever since its IPO in November 2013, the challenge for Twitter has been to balance the need to monetise its platform with ads without alienating its loyal user base,” said Myers.

The EMEA VP and MD for Marin Software revealed that Twitter ad revenue increased 97% from February 2014 to February 2015, due to the platform being such a highly attractive advertising medium for brands.

“Twitter has worked hard to attract brands by broadening its advertising options, opening up more audience data and launching new capabilities to reach users, such as pinned tweets and Vines. In the US it’s even trialling a ‘buy’ button,” he says.

He continues to state that these developments have been important for brands, who might otherwise fear that their message could be lost among the immense volume of noise on the platform, with over 9,000 tweets are posted every second.

Trumping Facebook

Myers also reviewed Twitter’s rapid and effective grasp of smartphones, ensuring mobile’s invaluable impact on usage and ad revenue.

“Twitter has also been quick to embrace mobile, something Facebook admits it took longer to do,” he remarks. “Smartphone adoption is a key reason Twitter will continue to grow in the years ahead; mobile already accounts for 85% of Twitter usage and 85% of all its ad revenue.”

The former Yahoo director for account management in the UK and Ireland also commends the platform for its clever adoption of ads without causing a detrimental effect on its popularity among users.

“All of this appears to have been achieved without upsetting existing users – it’s hard to find any evidence that ads are creating Twitter quitters.” Myers adds that although growth of new users has slowed, the platform remains on course to hit 400m users this month.

“The bottom line is that Twitter will continue to attract brands if the advertising works and if users are kept happy; keeping this balance in check will be critical. The signs are that, for now at least, it is doing a good job.