Q4 2019 Earnings Call
[music].
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to be Twitter fourth quarter and full year 2019 earnings conference call.
At this time.
All participants are any listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time.
I would now like to turn the call overture host precipitous Ginger.
<unk> Vice President Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone and thanks for joining our Q4 earnings.
This conference call, we have Joc and led with us today.
Where they start I just wanted to remind everyone of the format of hurtful.
We published a shareholder letter on our Investor Relations website, and with the FCC about an hour ago and hope everyone have a chance to read it.
Because the letter has a lot of detail.
Like last quarter, we'll keep our opening remarks brief and then dive right into your questions.
We also take questions asked on Twitter. So please tweet us at at Twitter IR using the cash tag Tw T R.
Also during this call we will make forward looking statements those are things like our outlook for Q.
One and the full year of 2020, and our operational plans and strategies.
Our actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by our forward looking statements and you should not consider our reported results as an indication of future performance.
We're making these forward looking statements based on information available to us.
As of today, and we disclaim any duty to update them later unless required by law.
Please take a look at our filings with the FCC, especially in the risk factor section in our most recent 10-K and in our 10-Q's for a discussion of the factors that could cause results to differ.
Also during this.
Call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, we've reconciled those to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in our shareholder letter.
These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for our GAAP results.
And finally call in its entirety is being webcast from our Investor Relations website.
An audio.
Claims will be available on Twitter and on our website in a few hours.
And with that I'd like to turn it over to Jack.
Good morning, everyone and thanks for joining our fourth quarter call.
A few highlights for me in that before we get to your questions.
2019 was a great year for Twitter are focused on making the service more instantly.
As compounding.
More than half of the 26 million EMEA use we added in 2019 were directly driven by improvements to the core product.
This quarter alone, we saw 21% year over year growth in daily active usage, our highest reported bringing us to 152 million M.D.A. you. This.
This is an incredibly strong foundation to build upon.
We're focused on five four priorities as we look forward I will talk about each now.
First we will increase our development velocity and trust.
Well, we've come a long way in improving our core infrastructure, we still aren't happy with how quickly we are able to move.
The time it takes to go.
From an idea to shipping something remarkable to customers simply takes too long.
We have a clear sense of whats blocking us and we're working hard to fix it.
Addressing this makes everything we want to do stronger and faster.
Second we will increase healthy public conversation.
As we said before we believe our work on health as a growth.
For us over the long term and fuels more conversations on Twitter.
Misleading information is probably the biggest challenge facing us and our industry.
This will be a key focus for us as we also continue to broaden the service towards following interest and topics, which I believe will be transformational for the service.
Interest represent.
An entirely new way to use Twitter and we will and will deliver far Richard timelines from Onboarding to daily years.
Third we will increase revenue durability.
As Youre all aware, we found some bugs last quarter, which impacted our performance Im confident in our work to address these issues and our path forward.
One positive.
It of signals that parts of our new AD stack that have already been shipped handled all the Super Bowl traffic.
Well, there's more work to do we've worked through a lot on map with a goal of being a more performance centric ads business.
It's worth takes time and we're committed to doing it in the right way.
And finally will enable anyone anywhere to.
Work at Twitter.
Spent the majority of last year traveling to every one of our offices in some places we don't yet have a presence we are global service the requires global perspective.
For us to continue to thrive and be valuable to people around the world we need people from around the world to work with US our concentration in San Francisco.
Cisco is not serving us any longer and we will strive to be a far more distributed workforce, which were used to improve our execution.
These four priorities will guide us for the next few years, then you should expect to see the results in our numbers. We've overcome so many challenges over the past five years, we've shown resilience in all those in highs.
Boldness in our stances and openness as we work to help public conversation in a way that benefits all not just Twitter.
Im really proud of what we've been able to make happen then I'm even more excited about how Twitter is evolving we're working hard everyday to make Twitter the public conversation layer of the Internet and we love our work and now overdone.
[music].
Thanks, Jack before we get into Q and I'll highlight a couple of points total revenue reached 3.46 billion up 15% on a constant currency basis with AD revenue also up 15% on a constant currency basis, primarily driven by 21% growth in the United States Q4 was a strong finished.
For the year with EMEA, you up 21% year over year as Jack mentioned this was largely driven by product improvements.
We delivered solid operating performance across most major geographies. Despite the map headwinds, resulting in revenue up 11% year over year with particular strength in us adds up 20% year over year. We also had our first.
Billion dollar quarter.
We continue to see a tremendous opportunity in front of us ticket the whole world to use Twitter and to provide a more personalized experience across both organic and promoting content delivering increasing value for both consumers and advertisers Jack talked a bit about our objectives for 2020 to support that work, we expect to go head count.
By 20% or more this year with a focus in engineering product design and research given investment decisions made in previous years and our anticipated 2020 head count growth. We expect total expenses, which include cost of revenue and all operating expenses to grow approximately 20% in 2020 ramping in absolute dollars over.
Of course of the year with that we're ready to take your questions operator.
As a reminder to ask a question you want me to press Star one on your telephone to withdraw your question press the pound or Heskey. Please standby will be compiled acuity roster.
Our.
First question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan.
Please go ahead your line is open.
Thanks, So much for taking my question, maybe two if I can just for you or do you continue to show a lot of momentum there, maybe just talk a little bit about what you're seeing the of the funnel evolving from me any use you have today in the Onboarding.
Process at the top of funnel.
We are just from the product innovation are doing and how that's translating into EMEA you growth.
Lower down the funnel bigger curious to get some additional color there and then net on the investment side I wanted to know if we give us instead of on the Capex guidance you called out one data center in 2020.
Much of that Capex is onetime in nature in 2020 versus maybe against a baseline that investors should be thinking about capital expenditures needs for the business over the longer term. Thanks much.
Thanks, Eric I'll take both and Jack Wallace had anything on the audience side ill jump in on the funnel, we continue to see a.
Really consistent group of people, who come to Twitter everyday who havent used the service for a month or more or who have never use that before and the work for us continues to be to help them find what they're looking for and give them a great experience on the service so that they'll come back more frequently we see lots of opportunities both to continue to convert people who have been infrequent users.
Users of Twitter and to convert those who are new to the service to become people who want to use Twitter everyday to find out what's happening in the world in what people are talking about so lots of opportunity in both and if you look at the breadth of the MD are you growth that we delivered this quarter, where we grew double digits and all of our top 10 markets with 15.
Preset growth in the us in 23% growth internationally, we feel like that Brett demonstrates the opportunity. Your second question was on Capex. So we grew capex, 10% in 2019 remember that number is going to move around from one period to another based on when server show up and when checks go out and we're not really.
Moving forward 90 day Windows, when we solve these things Rob optimizing for much longer time frames and that our capex will grow between 45 and 55% this year and the big change from the tend to the 45 to 55 range is that new datacenter that you mentioned, we're not going to breakout the details in terms of how much of.
Associated with.
One particular investment firm, but I suspect that they spend associated with with the new data center will be biased more towards the second half of the year and how far along we get in that project will cause that range to will be the biggest variable within the range that we've provided this isn't a new normal.
For us in terms of Capex growth rates. This is something that is more directly tied to a specific investment decision that we've made.
Thanks.
Thank you next question please.
Our next question comes from the line of Doug.
Jpmorgan. Please go ahead your line is open.
Thank you for taking the questions one for Jack and one for Ned.
Jack hoping you can talk about the early impact of topics, what you're seeing in terms of engagement. Some of the areas, where you think it might be able to be improved still and any commentary on how it may have helped using for Q and then Ned you talked about the AD issues from.
Last quarter Wang by four percentage points in Fourq, you, how should we think about that impact in one Q and really in the first half of 2020.
And can you talk a little bit about just the trajectory on revenue through the course of this year. Thanks.
Okay.
Thanks for the question Doug.
So.
Just to step back a little bit.
I do see Twitter more as an interest network.
And particularly the social network and what we mean by that is for.
Most of 14 years now people come to Twitter, because they're interested in something happening in the world some topics some some.
Just.
And we make them do a ton of work at the moment to finance and follow all the related accounts.
We've had we've had a number of from initiatives in the past to address this but but none that have been as cohesive as our most recent ones we have to.
Two vectors for this.
One is around lists and enabling people to very easily create a list.
Pin it to the top of their timeline switch between those very quickly.
Were gathered ton more capabilities to this as well so they'd become even richer.
You can add potentially other entities.
Besides just accounts and this is a great way too.
Someone equivalent to a playlist, where you can make something that you continue to maintain and then share with others. So that's the social aspect of it and then with interest.
You all have probably seen by now that if you see a tweet for instance.
About a basketball you might be prompted to follow the MBA or the Golden State Warriors.
And after you do that.
More tweets will will show up right in your timeline. This gives us an opportunity to show the best tweets per.
Per any interest the best accounts per any interest it just really broadens our approach.
In the timeline and makes the timeline extremely rich. We think this is great for people who use Twitter today.
And we have seen a lot of engagement the signals a lot of positive things early on.
But where I think this really makes a difference is how we think about onboarding and keep in mind when people come to Twitter.
We'll have to do all that work around finding and following the accounts that are related to their interest and we think we can take a bunch of that friction away.
Pay attention in the context that they happen to be in such as location.
And give them a rich timeline right away now again, we've had a ton of experiments on onboarding the past, but I don't think.
We fully saw through to help people would be using Twitter on a daily basis. So.
I do believe versus ultimately transformational and all the positive ways I think it gives people a rich timeline right away, but it also gives them a path towards discovering even more.
And ideally getting to them.
Getting them to position, where they feel a lot more comfortable participating.
In a conversation and not feeling like there just reading at the world, but treating at a particular interest.
Hey, Doug the second part your question was around the issues, we went through in October and their impact over time.
So those did indeed have for a more points of impact in the.
Fourth quarter as we talked about back in October.
It doesn't make sense to break that out over the course of this year as those are issues that we're going to continue to address as the year continues.
As a reminder, the way we think about remediation for those things is a few for the first is we worked in Q4 to ship.
The aggregated data to measurement partners. That's a first step along the way a second step is we want to continue to help the people who use the service I realize the benefits of a more personalized experience on Twitter, we continue to see that as an opportunity for us and as we continue to carefully.
Since our own company principles around data privacy and transparency with local regulation with the desire to get people into a timeline quickly with the desire to make sure. They have a great experience on Twitter overtime, our thinking continues to evolve and again, we see opportunity there and then the third.
Step is to continue our work on rebuilding the AD server that Jack went through in his opening comments, which we expect to.
Complete in the first half of this year.
And to continue our work to come out with a new version of our mobile application promotion AD format, not just to help improve and existing ad.
Matt for US that's important for our current advertisers, but also because this will give us a better path towards more direct response advertising overtime, if I step back from all this stuff I'd just point out that advertisers sentiment remains strong.
They continue to want to work with us to launch new products and services and connect with what's happening and you asked.
About the rest of this year and although we're not giving guidance beyond the first quarter. There's a ton of stuff that we're really excited about both from an audience perspective and from an advertiser perspective, some of it as quadrennial in nature like the Olympics, the Euro Cup the us presidential election, but there also are the annual events and those unanticipated things that bring people that Twitter to find.
Doubt, what's happening and what people are talking about.
Thank you Buck.
Thank you next question please.
Our next question comes from the line.
Gary of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead your line is open.
Great. Thanks.
Jack you reference the AD tech stack handling that.
The Super Bowl load can you get into the specifics of some of the improvements that.
That you've made to your programmatic technologies and maybe.
What the pipeline looks like there, particularly the degree to which you've been able to.
Close the gap between.
Where Twitter is.
In terms of.
Being able to handle the demands of direct response advertisers and what you see from some of the bigger platforms.
And then Ned you've added 11 million international da use over the last two quarters could you break down some of the contributors to that that da you.
Growth to what degree as this new users to the platform higher engagement among existing users are there specific countries regions topics.
Usage profiles.
That you would say are contributing to this.
The significant growth.
Thanks, I'll take both.
First on the AD server.
The idea of rebuilding the AD servers allow we want to be able to move faster we want to attract great people the company, who want to work on the latest technology, we want to make sure that when you want to improve something that you can work on a component of the AD server and that you don't need teams that work.
Across all of it we want to be able to test things faster enroll them faster. An example of that is our revenue science team now as five times the capacity to build new products and features which should ultimately lead to improved relevance for advertisers overtime. So weve shipped a number of improvements already and we expect that work to continue during.
During the first half of the or but to be completed within this year.
I'm sorry within the first half of the year.
And the works also tied to our work on map because as we continue to work to ship a new version of map, we feel like we'll have a better opportunity to help advertisers with more direct response type opportunities.
Overtime. The second part of your question was around International DVU.
We don't breakout the.
Do you by region, but I'd just point to the fact that we grew double digits in all of our top 10 markets to give you a sense for the breadth that we saw in terms of how people came to and embraced use of this.
Service on a daily basis.
It's no particular event, it's no particular region, it's no particular demographic or use case.
Wait Twitters designed is to allow people to find out about the topics and events that are most important to them wherever they are in the world and whatever those topics may be and to allow them to see all sides of of those topics and.
And we're really proud of the momentum that weve developed all around the world not in any particular place.
Thank you next question please.
Our next question comes from the line of Ross Sandler of Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Great just a couple of questions on on revenue.
Any additional color on on the strength in the us on marketing and for Q.
A function of the higher mix of branded video compared to international and then it looks like your once you guidance at the high end assumes a slight.
Pick up in AD revenue.
And our AD revenue growth. So are you guys fueling.
Increasingly confident about budget commitments in the pipeline in 2020 any color on on how the outlook there looks great.
Thanks, Ross. So there are two stories, we're sharing when you unpack the.
Revenue from Q4, the first is that 20% growth in United States, which demonstrates the strength of advertisers sentiment in the way we've been able to deliver for advertisers. A great example of that is Disney plus where we were able to help them with a critical launch where it was obviously a global launch and we help them all over the world, but you saw.
It.
Resonate with people in the United States, where they.
They.
Advertise the App, where they advertise the shows that people can see where they want it to help people helped form their opinions about the service as well as download the App. That's a great example of a success story from us from.
Q4, we find that map and direct response tends to be a bigger part of our business outside of United States than it is inside the United States. We grew international revenue, 3% and inside of that Japan grew 1%. So anticipating your questions around that I'd really point to map and just to give you an anecdote if you.
Okay, APAC broadly map was down 25% and APAC brand continued to grow and hopefully that gives you a sense that advertisers sentiment in terms of wanting to work with Twitter to launch new products and services and to connect with what's happening remained strong but work remains for us on those different areas, where we talked about on.
On the revenue product side in order to better help advertisers outside the United States and so thats. The work that will continue to undertake over the course at 2020.
I cited I guess another part of your question was around Q1 and what gives us.
Confidence around the range the guidance philosophy continues to be that we want to give you.
The most likely scenarios for how things could play out at the time of the earnings call. When we've got a couple of months left to go in the quarter Q1 is a time when.
We see lots of people get new devices and download apps for their device.
As we see lots of annual events that come up in the us in all around the world that are great engagement and revenue or advertising opportunities for us and so we continue to work hard to execute well against those into ALP advertisers realize their objectives I'll give you a cool stat. When we look at the Super Bowl.
We had all but one of the eligible advertisers from the Super Bowl advertising on Twitter.
Around the time of the Super Bowl.
A couple of them were political advertisers and you know all know that we don't accept their ads, but to get all but one of the others to advertise on Twitter is something we're really proud of and demonstrates how important.
We are to them amplifying the message.
Thank you next question please.
Our next question comes on line of Brian.
Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead your line is open.
Good morning, Thanks for thanks for taking my question sort of go back to the the rebuild and the new AD server I.
That seems like a potential game changer for advertisers can you give us a couple sort of more tangible examples of factors that your view it really focused on improving from an advertiser targeting our AD product perspective to really drive more more acceptance of new advertisers and ad budgets.
Hey, Brian there a couple.
Well things I gave one example earlier, but there are other examples that we think of where we can continue to better help advertisers, sometimes remember we get a lot of signal from how people use our service because of the things that they're looking into if you want to learn more about the Super Bowl or about an event that is happening and.
Your part of the World, We can show you a relevant ad.
Based on the search Sicher and we historically have done a great job showing people ads in their home timeline and have had opportunity to do a better job for them in other parts of the App and we came out with a different.
Promoted trend spotlight, which is a great example, way that we can help people in other parts of the App.
Late last year in early this year and there are other ways that we will continue to work to help advertisers reach their customers. When they are in an event specific timeline when they're searching for things and other parts of.
The surface area of the of the App. The AD server work a lot of it is foundational and things where you'll find that we'll be able to move faster, we'll be able to test things faster, we'll be able to learn and adapt more quickly because we won't need to work across all the different components of the AD server in order to do our work.
Thanks.
Thank you and we'll take the next question from Twitter accounts from the account of at Rich rebid the.
The question is revenue growth has been slower than user base growth, what's causing this trend you expected to continue and what can be down to counteract it.
Revenue growth is slower than user base growth, what's causing the trend you expected to continue and what can be done the corrected. Thanks for the question. So when we look at the last couple of years, you'll note and most of the quarter's revenue has grown faster than audience, which demonstrates our ability to do that over time, whether it's through.
Improving relevance continuing to address that demand supply balance we continue to feel more demand constrain than supply constrained when we look across surface areas and geographies and times of year.
And.
We continue to see opportunity to improve upon both of those things as well.
Does that help people, who want to build businesses around our npis in other ways that we can grow revenue faster than audience, but they won't match up perfectly every quarter as evidenced by the last couple of quarters were audience has grown in excess of revenue overtime. We continue to believe that revenue can grow in excess of audience.
But.
It's just going to vary from one period to another based on the geographical mix of the audience that we attract based on the work that we're doing on AD formats, and where we are in that progress as well as other factors, which will cause it to move in one direction or another.
Great. Thank you next question please operator.
Our next.
Question comes on line of Mark Mahaney RBC. Please go ahead your line is open.
Thanks two questions. Please.
Olympics is as much as a major marketing event. This year what are your plans for.
New products for users are new experiences for users and are there any particular sponsorship you have related to the Olympics I think.
Like you've had maybe with a world Cup in the past, though really allow you to participate in that AD spend and then Jack could you talk about your management plans for this year and just.
Plan to be in San Francisco, and if you're not in San Francisco for part of the year just address the complexity of running the company from not the headquarters if that is fact, what you're going to do thank you.
Yes, Mark I'll take the first part on.
Oh, sorry.
On the Olympics.
Jack are so excited to get to the second part I.
On the Olympics are a couple of things to point out when you think about all the work that we've done since the last Summer Olympics.
We now have event specific.
Mines is so much easier to find the information you're looking for on Twitter. We also have a much better sense for how to use live and stored video in order to improve the experience. So well have near real time highlights of the most important events people will get to vote on the content that they want to see on the service to highlight that they want to see and we.
Our partnership with NBC, a year before the opening ceremonies, which gave us the time to go find the right partners for all this great content and then ultimately will share the revenue the AD dollars with our content partners around these these highlights all around the world. So we've learned a lot from the past about how to improve the conversation how to improve the.
Intent and how to deliver better for advertisers and you'll see a lot of that show up in the Olympics, which of course happened in our second largest market in Japan, I'll turn it to Jack on the second part.
Just one point on the Olympics.
We have to build.
Infrastructure and product experiences that are scalable.
Now to every type of event and I think the biggest.
The biggest experience I think helps the Olympics allot and helps we will find the Olympics is around interest and topics.
I do think because I said earlier this will be transformational for our service, but certainly a much much better foundation for.
To serve events like the Olympics and events like the.
Elections coming up in elections around the world. So these are these are our goal here is not just to focus on any one particular event, but to actually build scalable experiences that serve all events.
In during when a durable way.
In terms of location I as I said in my opening I spent all last year traveling.
As it did every one of our offices around the world.
We.
Our execution throughout the year.
As I was traveling in us the management team was traveling continued.
Its pace I believe that we focused on our priorities in the same way that we would have otherwise.
I believe we had really good frameworks to understand any issues that would come up we had a good understanding of how to address anything that we saw on and move quickly on any opportunities that we saw as well so I don't fear any.
The slowness as we work to distribute our workforce Mark and I do think that we have to build a company that is not dependent entirely upon San Francisco, we already have two members of our leadership team in New York The Russ the balance of that in San Francisco I think as we look forward.
We're reaching a talent pool, the expects a lot more remote work.
Expects to work outside of California, and outside of San Francisco.
And we should be building our company around that I haven't made any plans just yet for for this year.
But I do expect that I will travel.
And I do think that we need to figure out how to.
Bill the company that is distributed that is not burdened by time zones, but it is advantaged by them and I think it'll give us a lot more prospective.
In some markets continue to emerge and our growing extremely quickly.
And to the point where even.
Our peers are looking very very deeply within those markets and within this continent. So.
I think we have a good framework no major changes to.
So to speak of but we have to comps improvement.
Yes.
Thank you next question please.
Our next question comes from the line Rich Greenfield late.
Please go ahead your line is open.
Hi, Thanks for taking the questions.
I will follow ups first.
You both talked about topics I'm curious now that you've had the product roll that is there any sense you can give us just how many of your users.
On a global basis are actually following at least one topic and then Jack in your opening remarks, you made a comment that there were issues blocking iteration you know what they are could you give us a sense of what those blockages are just so we understand how quickly they can get addressed and does that also apply to add products or was that specifically.
About the kind of the core timeline product of Twitter and then just sort of a big picture for either you or Ned.
Yes for a long time I think both of you were sort of talking about being stuck in this 9% to 14% band for D.A., you growth or Mds growth.
Obviously, you've broken out of that the last couple of quarters.
Sure.
And that sort of the product changes are working.
At 31 million US do you use your still tiny versus.
The universe of available users is Twitter product that you envision like could it be 60 million US uses 100 million us user like.
How big do you think this product ultimately can be thanks.
Yes so.
On topics, we're not breaking out any numbers, just yet, but I will kind of picture of what I believe is the opportunity.
We still really havent promoted them heavily within the service so there's still a little bit hard to discover the topic browser is.
And initial go.
What we want to do it's over.
In the side menu, if you're on the up and you can browse topics and we continue to add topics every single day, we're adding more languages as well, but when we get a lot more confidence around the experience, we're providing will make it much much more discoverable. In addition to the timeline prompts.
In the navigation itself. So right now we're doing work to look at our navigation and really make sure that we're putting our best foot forward in terms of making that discoverable. So that people can see it immediately.
Boarding is another opportunity obviously that we've been speaking to and again, we want to make sure that the experience of people are going.
Going into is great.
Before we put in front of people, who are just coming to service are coming back to the service. So those are the only blockers to that but but the early signals are quite positive and I'm.
Really really excited about this future. This has been a longtime coming it's something we want to do.
For years, and and we're finally at the point, where we can bring it all together. So I do think this this changes a lot.
In terms of the issues to our development speed.
A lot of this has to do with.
Our infrastructure, we're still working through.
How what we build on and certainly that.
Next the consumer side, but also.
The AD product side.
The the revenue product team has as move very very quickly to focus on the core AD infrastructure and at the end of the day.
Per per the previous question. What this means is as we look at the core infrastructure and we.
We look at how people.
How are engineers are actually building the better that is the more stable. It is the easier. It is to develop it just means that we can run more experience experiments faster, we can build products much faster. We can learn much faster, we can get feedback loops from our customers much faster so everything improves in the same is.
True on the consumer side, we have to look deeply at our tools, we have to look deeply.
Our development time, and what's blocking us we have a better understanding of what some of those things are.
And also just our understanding of the service how we utilize the data.
We're seeing to better inform our decisions around experiments that we run so we're working really hard to make sure that we can move much faster.
So that we can experiment faster, we can learn faster and we can ship much faster and.
This is something that has plagued us for years.
But we've we've put it as our number one priority as the company.
And we have an incredible team some of some of whom have been here for years, some of whom we've just attracted to the company.
So to help us addresses and to your last question.
Absolutely I mean, I think Twitter has has value.
To everyone in the world.
I think a big part of our work has been to help.
Unlocked value for folks to help them understand why Twitter is valuable a lot of people see treats every single day, they see them on television to see them in newspapers we.
We havent given them enough.
And yet to come to the App and utilize it themselves, but everything that we're doing.
From interest to relevance in the timeline to conversations is towards that goal and ultimately this will come down to what people experience when they first download the upper when the first opened to the dot com.
But we have the we have the foundations in a really strong plays where we can actually put a cohesive picture together for people on that.
So it gets me really excited and confident that when people do here through to the they'll have more reason to download and use them.
And Jack when you think about the Twitter browser for topics.
Sure and even the browser it seems sort of clunky like why not just seems like you know what I'm interested in like why not just show me. The 50 things that rich greenfield interested in or that net seagulls interested in like why give me the like everything possible to topically follow.
Yes. These are just sequences so by doing it this.
His way we get to learn.
And we will certainly always have a mode, where people can go into a list of topics to discover them.
But based on the learnings that we are getting right now we can use us signals to do more of that automatically. So the goal with all this is to move from something out as mechanical to start.
To something that is more automated and we just need more signal and we need to continue to experiment more but it's it's not long off.
Thank you next question please.
Our next question comes from the line of Justin Post of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you two questions first on you growth any commentary on the.
Amount of visits or ties that per user you seen engagement per user.
Notably and then secondly data business grew 9% last year I think you're before was in the Twentys.
You give us.
Our outlook for that business, how do you see the growth rate over the next few years. Thank you.
Thanks, Justin so on the first part we continued to be pleased with what we see from an engagement perspective, but the best way for you to measure it is going to be to look at that growth in monetizable daily active usage as if that number is growing it means that we're delivering.
Value on a daily basis to people around the topics in events that they care about most.
Nothing to update on there on the data licensing and other side remember there's two pieces to that revenue line. The first is the data and enterprise solutions opportunity, where we feel really good about our execution and as we mentioned.
A year ago, we said that we'd executed so well on our strategy in bringing people to the right type of contract over the right term that we expected the growth rate to moderate that proved to be the case, but we also continued to both renew our existing customers and find other new customers, who we could help.
Create a business or further build their business around our eyes and there is lots more opportunity for US there. We made our guys freemium and we're still seeing lots of opportunity in front us around the data business. The second piece is mopub, which shows our mobile AD exchange and we've got work to do.
There and that's holding the growth rate down a bit.
But we think we've got a good path forward and one of the ways that Mopub will benefit is as we continue our work around more direct response oriented AD formats, starting with map that should benefit mopub as well.
Thank you.
Thanks next question.
Please.
Our next question comes from the line of Lloyd Wamsley Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks to if I can first just.
How do you guys see the strong user growth impacting conversations with advertisers and just overall interest in the platform from the AD community.
Does the acceleration in growth translate fairly quickly into excitement in the United community.
Anything you can share there would be great and then secondly, just kind of going back to the user growth.
Can you can you give us a sense for specific cohort behavior on on newer user groups, particularly.
As we get into some of the big quadrennial events.
Do you feel like your your retention of this new users is continuing to make improvement.
Traction.
Great. Thanks, Lloyd first on advertisers sentiment it continues to be really strong and they want to invest and a growing.
Platform, where they see the audience growing where they know that there are thought leaders, who are helping form opinions about their products are coming to learn and explore around their products in order to decide if those are things in which they want to invest and that's helped us a ton whether I think about the conversations we have with advertisers at the consumer.
Electronics show or at other points during the year that the sentiment remains strong and they they've embraced our objectives, we tell them that where the placed a launch something new or to connect with what's happening that really resonates when we share the our thinking that we've got the most valuable audience when they're most receptive.
Really.
It's with them as well.
So we feel good about advertiser sentiment and the way that ARPU growth is contributing to that when we look at cohorts of people who are new to Twitter. We continue to be pleased with what we see in terms of their engagement and how they use the service we are.
Also note that Theres lots that we can do better for them, we're doing a better job of surfacing content for them accounts. They should follow topics. They should follow but we know there's even more that we can do there to help them, but nothing new to report in terms of the cohorts and how they're behaving.
Thank you.
Thank you operator, I think we have time for just one last question. Please.
Our final question today will be from Michael.
Pivotal research. Please go ahead your line is open.
Yes, thanks for the question guys.
Two questions for you one basically how would you categorize.
What.
What R&D is is able to do in terms of innovating.
On the Dior front versus still having to to rectify the issues around map.
And I guess the second question is a lot of folks have been focused on the Olympics as being a big catalyst.
There is this scenario that that map can be.
Basically be rectified in advance of that have in Japan, which I know is a big map market.
So thanks for the questions Michael on the R&D. So we always try to lead with technology solutions, whether it's the work we do around health, where we mentioned last.
Quarter that more than half of the abuse of tweets that we action, we're finding through machine learning as opposed to through people identifying them or this quarter, where we mentioned that we've reduced the bystander reports by 27%, which we think is directly linked to the hard work that we're doing to be proactive and identify.
Hi content that shouldn't be on the service before people pointed out to us. The same is true around our revenue products were rebuilding the AD server were coming out with the new version of map and leading to more direct response advertising formats for us overtime.
Will allow us to innovate faster and move faster experiment faster.
So we certainly think about leading with R&D when we think about the revenue products on the Olympics.
So as important as it is for us when we step back and think about the larger opportunity for us to have more direct response related offerings, starting with Matt.
When we think about a quadrennial.
Like the Olympics and a lot of the advertising that you see here on these are we feel like we're really well positioned with our existing AD formats that isn't to say that we're not focused on launching the new version of that whenever as soon as we can but it also means that the pre roll that you often see around highlights the connecting with what's happening that you just saw around the.
Super Bowl that you'll see around the Olympics in the summer are things that we feel like we're really well position to address with our existing AD format. We feel great about their work we've done to make video a much bigger part of the service and the experience that advertisers can deliver with on Twitter and we feel like we're well positioned to help them deliver during the Olympics.
Great. Thanks, so much.
I will now turn call back over to management for closing remarks.
Alright, Thank you for joining us we appreciate your interest in Twitter, we look forward to speaking with you next quarter before I.
Rob I, just want to say happy birthday to my favorite listener, it's my dad's 18th birthday today and I'm sure. He is up and listening, although it's early and dark here in San Francisco still.
We next report earnings for Q1 on April Thirtyth before the market opens we will see you all then and on Twitter before then.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating you may now disconnect.