Twitter Hopes To Sell Moments & Woo More Users With World Series Ads

With user growth stagnant, Twitter is hoping to sell a new feature with old-school marketing.

The social media network is launching a national TV advertising campaign tonight during the World Series. The first ad, called “Post-Season,” is a 30-second spot to introduce Twitter’s new Moments feature to sports fans. The ad highlights scenes from the Major League Baseball playoffs — Jose Batista bat flips, cursed Chicago Cub goat GIFs, spectacular catches in the outfield — as they appeared within tweets. Here’s the ad in an embed courtesy of The Verge (which has a very good post about Twitter’s strategy in running it):

It’s not the first Twitter TV ad campaign, but it’s a crucial one. Twitter declined to share how much the TBWA\Chiat\Day ads cost to produce or place on the Fox broadcast, but it’s clear that Twitter is making a big bet that it will be able to persuade more people to use Twitter.

The growth stats have been grim in 2015; Twitter reported 320 million monthly active users in its third quarter earnings report today, a total only 4 million more than the second quarter. The news is worse in the US where Twitter hasn’t added any users to its 66 million MAUs since January.

Twitter hopes to fix the problem by simplifying its product — Twitter executives admit it’s too complicated for new users — and then making a strong pitch to people who know about Twitter but don’t use it regularly.

On Twitter’s earnings call with investors today, CEO Jack Dorsey said Twitter is working on a number of ways to make the platform less puzzling to new users. Moments, the first of those, launched three weeks ago to give people a curated view of live events on Twitter. Dorsey said Moments is a big leap for Twitter, away from its chaotic, reverse chronological main feed that confuses many people. When you open Moments, Dorsey said, “immediately you see what’s going on and it’s the best of Twitter in one place. It’s done in a very curated-story-chronological-narrative way that makes sense. It gives you insight into an event that you would not be able to see elsewhere.”