Twitter, Snap shares jump on solid results
Shares of Twitter and Snap soared on Friday. That rise driven by quarterly results that one analyst said showed a digital ad market on fire.
Twitter posted higher revenue growth than expected thanks to a number of improvements aimed at helping brands reach potential customers on the app.
New products like audio-only chat rooms and newsletter publishing appear to be paying off.
Advertising revenue surged to just over $1 billion in the second-quarter......that's a healthy 87 percent boost over the same time a year ago.
Total revenues, which includes money earned from licensing deals, topped forecasts.
And quarterly profits smashed expectations.
Subscriber numbers also didn't disappoint.
What Twitter calls "monetizable daily active users" - the most important number for advertisers - came in at 206 million.
It was a strong quarter for Snapchat parent Snap Inc. as well.
It posted its highest growth rates in more than 3 years.
User growth and revenues topped analysts forecasts as new Snapchat features attracted more users.
Daily active users rose 23% to 293 million during the quarter.
Revenues more than doubled to $982 million.
Snap found a winner during the lockdown by promoting ad formats on Snapchat geared toward bringing in sales for advertisers.
It let users swipe up on a mobile ad to go to the brand's website. The formula is still driving in the revenues.
The company also guided estimates higher for the current quarter.
Strength in online ad sales as seen in both Twitter and Snapchat's results raises the bar for Facebook and Google; those two online ad giants report results next week.
