News & Insights

While Elon Musk continues to make waves and court controversy, for brands specifically looking to target male audiences, Twitter may present an opportunity.

Twitter’s total audience size has long lagged behind the billions on Facebook and Instagram, but those numbers creeped up in recent years. In 2020 Twitter had 186 million active daily users; in 2021 the number rose to 217 million; and in November 2022, Musk announced that Twitter had reached an all-time high of 259 million users. This latest surge may have been driven by the eye-popping changes Musk is forcing on the social platform, but 39% user growth in two years is not too shabby.

Overall, men make up nearly 70% of Twitter’s users, the heaviest male-skew of any major social network platform. For comparison, Facebook skews 56% male, Instagram’s 51% male and TikTok’s audience is 57% female.  Twitter also skews young, with 39% between ages 25-34. This is the same demographic of action-oriented video games (male skew, average age 33), Reddit (61% male), NASCAR fans (63% men) and licensed skydivers (median age 35, 86% male). In other words, that notoriously hard-to-reach younger male audience who have been tuning out traditional media for years.

While we remain concerned about Twitter’s content moderation and brand safety, Twitter’s ability to reach a young male audience at scale may fill an important role for advertisers trying to reach this specific audience.