What Promoted Tweets Mean to Brands

Jon Cogan, Blend360 Communications

Earlier this week, Twitter announced the launch of their ad model, Promoted Tweets. Essentially, this will work similarly to Google paid search except that instead of an ad being displayed, it is your Twitter update. Twitter will also be basing placement, longevity and price based on Tweet performance, measured by number of re tweets, favoriting or replies.

But what will this mean for brands. Well as soon as you look at the business application to this, you see a very different advertising tactic at play here. It once again comes down to the fact that social media and the networks that make them up are best used by marketers as a branding tactic, not direct response. Whereas paid search is all about driving traffic for the purpose of converting visitors into customers, this will not hold water in the social spectrum. It's all about knowing the audience and the theater they are in. Google's ads are targeted to searchers with an intent to purchase. Twitter's searchers are trying to get involved in or expand on a conversation. This is paying for engagement, not paying for a directed customer response. Very different, especially when trying to explain the ROI potential of Promoted Tweets.

Twitter has kicked off this program by offering exclusively to their established partners , including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks and Virgin America. These brands have the budgets that can afford them brand impressions through a service such as this. Smaller advertisers will have a much lower cost threshold, and it will be interesting to see how CFOs respond to their marketing teams paying to advance an online conversation! There is a bit of a failsafe at work here though as Twitter will significantly lower the Promoted Tweets placement value should it not be much of a conversation starter. So in this way, advertisers will at least be able to take comfort in the fact that if their click fees are high, its likely because they have established a high level of engagement. This can serve as a very useful model for what I like to call social crisis management. A Promoted Tweet responding to a negative scenario will be placed prominently, making it easier for the brand to get its message across.

Once Twitter's ad model is opened up to all advertisers, brands are going to have to make sure their Promoted Tweets are engaging, and that they fully invest themselves into the conversations they start (or attempt to finish).

You can read my general overview of Promoted Tweets Here.

Comments

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Well don't know whats going on but its not a Good way to do this. in my opinion we have to look again about this issue

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First time I've heard of this!! I still wonder if Twitter realizes what they have their hands on sometimes. I think you hit it dead on with saying that Twitter isn't meant for direct response... now if only my followers would get that!

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, Sony Pictures, Starbucks and Virgin America. These brands have the budgets that can afford them brand impressions through a service such as this. Smaller advertisers will have a much lower cost threshold, and it will be interesting to see how CFOs respond to their marketing teams paying to advance an online conversation! There is a bit of a failsafe at work here though as Twitter will significantly lower the Promoted Tweets placement value should it not be much of a conversation starter. So in this way, advertisers will at least be able to take comfort in the fact that if their

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