Applications
Twitter ads now available to all US users
MUMBAI: Twitter‘s senior director of product for revenue Kevin Weil announced the launch of its advertising options for all US users on Tuesday at TechCrunch‘s Disrupt in New York. The company had previously made advertising on the platform invite-only.
The first announcement was made on April 2010 by social media giant stating it would show ads. Since then it has openly promoted tweets and accounts, which lets people pay to get their updates seen and their profiles followed. Additionally, it announced limited availability of a self-serve tool for buying ads in March 2012, and an ads application programming interface (API) for programmatic buying of huge campaigns in February recently.
Last week, Twitter announced that its ads could be targeted based on keywords tweeted or within tweets engaged with by users, which lets Twitter move towards demand fulfillment like Google search ads.
Most recently, Twitter opened its advertising API to third parties, letting larger advertisers to create more refined campaigns on the portal. The company launched that program with five partners – Adobe, Hootsuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.
“Over the past year we‘ve listened carefully to feedback from the thousands of businesses and individuals who‘ve had access to the self-serve tool, and made enhancements based on their suggestions, including more targeting and reporting in the UI,” the company wrote in a blog post. “It‘s because of this feedback that effective today, we‘re ending our invite-only period and opening signups for our self-serve ad platform to all users in the US.”
According to eMarketer the company, which is expected to go public within the next year, is projected to earn $1 billion in ad revenues in 2014.
Applications
Canva acquires animation and AI startups Cavalry and MangoAI
The deals strengthen Canva’s push into enterprise and AI-led design workflows
AUSTRALIA: Global visual communication platform Canva has stepped up its acquisition drive, buying UK-based 2D animation platform Cavalry and US-based AI startup MangoAI to deepen its AI-powered creative stack.
Cavalry, whose tools are used by brands including Amazon, Meta, Google and Netflix, will strengthen Canva’s motion design capabilities. The deal builds on Canva’s 2024 acquisition of Affinity, which has crossed four million downloads since launch. With Cavalry, Canva now counts seven Europe-based acquisitions, underscoring its global expansion strategy.
MangoAI, an early-stage startup focused on video advertising optimisation, will integrate its reinforcement learning systems into Canva AI. The move aims to enable brands to generate personalised marketing content in real time, cutting production cycles while improving campaign performance. MangoAI co-founder Vinith Misra will join Canva as reinforcement learning lead in its research lab.
Canva co-founder and chief operating officer Cliff Obrecht said the acquisitions reflect the company’s ambition to make professional-grade creative tools more accessible without sidelining human creativity. The goal, he said, is to bring everything from vector to motion design into a single, integrated suite.
The company now reports 265 million active users, including 31 million paid subscribers, and $4 billion in annualised revenue, up 36 per cent year on year. The latest buys further position Canva against rivals such as Adobe and Apple’s Creator Studio as it pushes deeper into enterprise workflows.
Canva head of pro design marketing Liam Fisher, said AI is intended to act as a creative assistant rather than a replacement, reinforcing the primacy of craft and individual design judgement.
