Following the launch of Twitter Offers, Twitter, Inc. TWTR is now taking its e-Commerce business to the next level by selling NBA sports tickets. NBA’s Atlanta Hawks tweeted that a limited number of tickets for Wednesday’s playoff against the Brooklyn Nets will be sold directly via Twitter. Users can select the number of tickets and pay with a credit card without being redirected to another portal.
While shopping oriented tweets have been making the rounds since the launch of Twitter Offers, it has failed to gain much popularity. However, we expect the sale of sports tickets to gain traction on Twitter, given the high level of interaction between celebrities, clubs and sports teams on Twitter.
We believe that the shopping-enabled tweets could be a significant revenue driver for Twitter. Not only would it help attract new users but Twitter could also earn directly through commissions if the initiative proves successful. In addition, this will promote the “Buy” button to users who do not follow any particular e-Commerce or brand account.
Twitter had been gearing up to join the e-Commerce bandwagon. Earlier, the company partnered with Starbucks Corp. SBUX, American Express and Amazon.com AMZN to offer e-Commerce services. We believe that the experience from these collaborations will help Twitter to offer a smooth and secure e-Commerce platform, going forward.
Further, in 2014, Twitter bought CardSpring that facilitates connection among merchants and payment processors. CardSpring’s e-Commerce platform links card users’ accounts to merchants and tracks user card swipes. It thus helps merchants determine the effectiveness of online promotions of offline sales and therefore offer more effective and better-targeted ads.
Per eMarketer, global business-to-consumer (B2C) e-Commerce sales will increase 20.1% to $1.5 trillion in 2014 and hit $2.4 trillion by 2017, which presents a significant growth opportunity for Twitter.
As competition intensifies in the advertising market, e-Commerce opens up a new revenue source for this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) micro-blogging site. However, we believe that Twitter will face significant competition in this market, particularly from Facebook FB which enjoys significant leverage due to its massive user base.
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
Be the first to comment