Twitter CEO has 'no idea' how many users opt out of tailored ads on site

In a rare incidence of a company head caught off guard, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that he had no idea about how many users opted out of tailored ads presented on the microblogging site.

Costolo said that though it is easy for users to say no to those ads, he does not know how many actually go through the process of doing so.

According to Tech Crunch, the statement was made on the keynote stage at the ongoing CES 2014 in Las Vegas, where Costolo spoke alongside Maurice Levy, CEO of ad giant and Twitter business partner Publicis, on the subject of advertising in the age of social media.

While Costolo failed to provide any statistics about the percentage of users opting out of ads, Levy came to his rescue and said that in France and Europe the opt-out rate was below 5 percent due to cautious advertising as a result of stronger data protection rules.

The comments appear to echo the company's stock scenario post the hyped IPO in November last year with Twitter seeing falling share price on the back of stock downgrades as analysts have deemed the stocks to be 'too expensive'.