Twitter $Cashtag Stock Chart
Drive engagement and monetize Financial Twitter
Overview
Introduced real time stock chart on Twitter's $Cashtag pages, and a novel, integrated ad experience that drove $XX MM incremental revenue. As Design Consultant for Twitter's $Cashtag stock chart, I combined interaction design, visual design, research, and rapid prototyping to enhance product experience and ads monetization. Launched across mobile and web in December 2022, followed by improvements through 2023.
Missed opportunity to serve the FinTwit community.
Twitter is the go-to place for online conversations about Finance. Financial news break on Twitter before they hit traditional media. Tweets from influential figures literally move markets. Financial Twitter ("FinTwit") is one of the most engaged communities on the platform.
Despite strong signs of organic product market fit, Twitter had not made active investments in this area for at least a decade. We believe this represented a major opportunity.
Our goals are two-fold:
1 - Drive engagement by building experiences tailored to Financial user journeys on Twitter;
2 - Monetize this high intent, lucrative engagement by developing novel forms of advertising.
Market dynamics presents unique monetization opportunity
Meteoric rise of online investing.
In the last 2 years investing online became mainstream, thanks to the rise of trading apps - Robinhood, Coinbase, Crypto.com, etc - which offered users an unprecedented level of convenience.
Intense competition in trading app space.
Trading apps is a commodity business. The lack of differentiation in supply means that the competition for demand (user attention) is fierce.
Monetizing Twitter's retail investor hub.
“Twitter $Cashtag” is one of the premier online locations that retail investors seek information and opinions. A user journey starts from Twitter. Today we don't offer an integrated experience, and we monetize 0% of this opportunity.
Inspired by Google Hotel ads playbook.
We can take a page from the Google Hotel Ads playbook, build an integrated experience for users and a lucrative business.
Addressing diverse user needs
The design process was guided by the needs of various stakeholders: retail investors seeking timely market information, marketing professionals from trading platforms looking to increase engagement, and companies aiming to attract investors.
Retail investor
I want to know the latest events that affect the market.
I want to know how thought leaders think about these events.
I want to invest accordingly.
Trading app marketeer
I want to drive order flow from existing users (and thereby increase revenue).
I want to acquire new users.
Company raising money
I want to attract retail investors to invest in my company.
Crafting the user journey: high-fidelity mockups
The $Cashtag page brings four elements into one surface: a real-time stock chart, Twitter's unique conversation-data insights, an integrated ad slot for investment apps, and the top tweets driving the conversation.
How do users arrive at the $Cashtag section?
$Cashtag in Tweet
This entry point is designed for users who encounter $Cashtag within tweets. It's a seamless transition from reading a tweet to accessing detailed financial information, making it a straightforward way for users to explore investment opportunities based on real-time discussions.
$Cashtag in Explore page
For users navigating through the Explore page, we feature $Cashtag as a part of trending topics. This entry point is ideal for users looking to discover financial trends and insights, connecting them to relevant $Cashtag pages from broader discussions.
Search specific company
When users search for a specific company, the search results include the company's $Cashtag. This provides immediate access to the company's financial data and Twitter discourse, offering a comprehensive view for potential investors or those tracking the company's performance.
Search trending $Cashtag
Users searching with the "$" symbol are presented with the top three trending tickers. This approach is tailored for users who are actively seeking investment ideas or market trends, offering them a direct gateway to the most discussed financial topics on Twitter.
Develop more immersive ad formats together with customers
Beyond the initial, basic "Invest" button ad placement, we worked with multiple clients to develop concepts for next generation, more immersive ad experiences.
These ad formats create a premium sponsorship experience and help us tap into additional client marketing budgets.
