Twitter has ceased development of ‘Buy’ buttons, as re-inaugurated CEO Jack Dorsey makes a decisive tack away from social commerce to its more profitable core forms of monetisation.
As a result, the social network’s 25-man commerce division has been disbanded, with those that have remained relocating into Twitter’s dynamic product ads and customer service arms.
Despite the buzz around social commerce perpetuated by its adoption by its closest rivals, such as Facebook and Pinterest, Twitter’s step away from making direct buying available on its network suggests it’s not such an easy win as first thought.
Dwindling demand
A source close to Twitter’s commerce team revealed to Buzzfeed that “people are not buying” on social media channels, for the most part purchasing on the mobile web, which has stalled the further development of the site’s direct sale product.
“There’s still an active ‘Buy Now’ card at Twitter, but no one’s putting any work into it. There’s no new product development happening.”
Instead, Twitter is ‘doubling-down’ on what’s working, which is Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs), targeted to users based on browsing activity; Twitter has claimed these have double the CTR and conversion rate than its regular promoted tweets.
“We have more product, engineering and business focus on commerce as a result of focusing on DPAs. The bottom line is DPAs work for advertisers and we will continue to invest in that product,” read a statement by Twitter.
The group’s departure from speculative commerce efforts and reinvestment into ‘the now’ is further evidenced by its introduction of its Twitter Audience Platform to desktop and the mobile web, having been originally exclusive to in-app ads.
This allows Twitter’s advertisers to gain access to inventory across the thousands of publishers both on its books, taking advantage of the network’s powerful targeting and analytics capabilities.