Mike Stiles
In an effort to reduce its reliance on US advertising dollars, Twitter executives announced at Cannes that they are rolling out access to Twitter advertising and promoted items to 50 countries by the end of 2012. Things will start in Brazil, Germany and Spain, and expand further from there.
Twitter unveiled its first ad offering in 2010 and was quite quick in making its advertising opportunity available on mobile devices. Twitter executives point out that it has always been a made-for-mobile platform, so their ability to monetize its mobile version has drawn sharp contrasts to other social platforms such as Facebook, still grappling with leveraging its astonishing number of users who access the site on mobile.
As for Twitter, it has 140 million members worldwide with 60% of its users accessing it via mobile. In the UK, that number goes up to 80%. Twitter’s fastest growing market month on month is Saudi Arabia. No great surprise then that the company would want European and other international social marketers to have access to its promoted tweets, promoted trends and promoted accounts.
Promoted Tweets are tweets marketers can purchase so they can reach more users with it and get more reaction and engagement to it from that brand’s existing followers. It shows up in a user’s Twitter stream only if the company’s algorithms determine it will be wanted and appreciated by that user.
With Promoted Trends, advertisers can show up where users see trends that reflect what’s being discussed most on Twitter. These trends can be centered around specific events, times, or subjects and are delineated with the hashtag (#). Promoted Trends show up at the top of that topics list. If a user clicks it, they’ll see all the tweets containing that trend term, with a related Promoted Tweet from the ad buyer, again positioned at the top.
Promoted Accounts are part of the Who to Follow function on Twitter. In all of the places suggestions of who a user might like to follow, a Promoted Account can surface. But again, relevancy is key. A suggestion to follow a paying brand will only turn up if Twitter determines the user follows other accounts that indicate they might also like to follow the advertising brand’s account.
Like Facebook, Twitter takes pains to keep the user experience paramount. That is why all promoted tweets, trends and accounts are clearly marked as paid for, promoted items. It’s also why even though a brand has paid good money for additional exposure, they will not get that exposure unless there is a high likelihood a user will find the connection relevant and not be put off by its presence. If a user is not interested in you or your message at all, they are free, as with any other tweet, to hide or block content from you, paid or otherwise.
Twitter is predicting $1 billion in ad revenue by 2014. Now we get to see if international social marketers will assign the kind of value to Twitter’s paid opportunities it will take to reach that mark.
About the Author
Mike Stiles is a content strategist with Vitrue, the leading social relationship management technology platform in the industry, and author of Showtime: Brands as Content Producers.
