What advertisers should know from Twitter’s Q3 2016 earnings call

Twitter execs used to point to major events like the Super Bowl or the US presidential election as top opportunities to attract new users or bring back people who stopped using Twitter. So it would make sense that the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in July, the Summer Olympics in August, and the first US presidential debate in September would draw new users. Nope.“Did the Olympics and election drive [Twitter’s] acceleration in metrics? What I would say is no,” said Twitter CFO Anthony Noto during Thursday’s earnings call. When it came to the Olympics in particular, “there was less than 100,000 [daily active users] over that 17-day time period using a seven-day average that would get attributed to the Olympics,” he said.Instead of people primarily registering a Twitter account because of one-off events, they appear to be doing so because of everyday Twitter. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said improvements to Twitter’s product were what spurred its audience growth in the third quarter. He specifically credited more relevant notifications pointing to tweets that offer a better peek at the rest of Twitter, as well as the algorithmically curated mini-timeline for boosting usage.But but BUT, for all the “millions” of people who signing up for Twitter every day, there are a bunch of people signing out. Twitter execs didn’t say specifically how many millions of people are registering or resurrecting accounts every day, but let’s put it at a somewhat conservative two million. So two million new users every day for a 30-day month equals 60 million new monthly active users. That’s awesome. Except Twitter only added four million monthly active users in the third quarter.