'Net Features : Promoted Tweets

Now Open: Twitter Self-Serve Ads

Allison Howen — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:30:00 GMT

After spending a year in limited release, Twitter has finally opened its self-service advertising program to the public.

This is not only big news for businesses who maintain an active presence on the micro-blogging social network, but also for businesses that are new to Twitter and professionals who are trying to grow their personal brand – as these ads improve a user’s visibility and can even help a business increase key metrics like conversions.

Twitter Self-Serve Ads 101

Twitter's self-service platform offers Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts as advertising formats. Both formats are labeled as “Promoted” when they appear on the social network so that users can easily identify them as paid advertisements. That said, all Promoted content is displayed next to regular content on a Twitter user’s newsfeed, which means that these ads don’t interrupt the user experience.

Promoted Tweets, for example, appear in the newsfeed on mobile devices, desktops, laptops and tablets, while Promoted Accounts are featured in the “Who to follow” area of the homepage.

Once you begin the ad creation process, Twitter offers a variety of targeting options, including by location, gender, interest categories, user names, device and platform. These options should be leveraged to help users reach the most relevant audience. After the campaign’s audience has been selected, creating a budget is the next step.

Twitter’s self-serve ads only require users to pay when targeted audience members engage with Promoted Tweets or Accounts. This includes interactions such as clicks, retweets, replies, favorites and follows. During the set-up process, users can select their daily maximum budget as well as maximum bid per engagement or follow. In order to make the process easier for new advertisers, Twitter even provides a recommended maximum budget for each ad type ($1.50 for Promoted Tweets and $2.50 for Promoted Accounts). Moreover, the social network provides an “Estimated Reach” graph within the self-service interface, so that users have a better understanding of how their budget and targeting options will affect their ad’s visibility.

It is also important to note that Twitter’s self-serve ad platform provides users with real-time analytics, which can be used to analyze and optimize future campaigns. For instance, the Promoted Tweets dashboard displays valuable ad metrics, such as impressions, number of clicks and click rate, while the Follower growth chart helps users keep track of their brand's growth by providing data on followers that have been gained with and without Promoted Accounts.

5 Best Practices

1. Take advantage of location targeting – Twitter’s targeting options allow users to target by location on a country, state/region and metro level. This allows users to decide if their campaign should be launched on either a very broad or a local level. Moreover, users can target numerous locations with one campaign, which is beneficial to brands that are present in a variety of areas, businesses that have storefronts in multiple locations and expanding businesses.

2. Reach relevant people/groups – Ads perform best when they are displayed to people who are interested in the advertiser and their content, which is why this targeting option can greatly influence an ad’s effectiveness. Users can target by both @username interest and interest category. The interest category option is helpful when trying to reach a specific group of people, while the @username option helps businesses make sure their ads reach specific and influential Twitter users.

3. Target based on device/platform – The device and platform targeting options allow users to focus their campaigns on their most valuable or relevant customers. For example, if you’re launching a Promoted Tweet for a new iOS app, you most certainly want to target iOS devices and probably desktop and laptop computers, however, you might want to leave Android and Blackberry users out of your campaign so that your ad dollars aren’t wasted.

4. Don’t be over-promotional – The best part of Promoted Tweets is that they are incorporated into a user’s newsfeed, which means they are not an in-your-face advertisement. That said, the best way to obtain higher engagement rates with these ads is to make sure the content appears as it would in a regular tweet. This doesn’t mean that these tweets can’t contain links or some type of promotional information, however, it’s important to stay relatable so that customers are more likely to interact with your ads.

5. Amplify existing tweets – If you have already posted an engaging tweet that contains content suitable for an advertisement (such as a white paper link, a look at a new product or info on a hot promotion), consider using it for a Promoted Tweet. Twitter allows users to promote multiple tweets, including new and existing posts. Since some content has already proved to be engaging, businesses can put it in front of a brand new audience to further increase its visibility and boost its audience interactions.

Targeted Tweets Reach a Relevant Audience

Michael Garrity — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 14:45:00 GMT

In the realm of social media advertising, Twitter has procured a specific role, primarily for businesses to build brand awareness, but also allowing them to advertise, offer special promotions, provide customer support, answer questions, and more, all in 140-character bursts.

However, one thing that has been missing from the platform is the ability to show highly targeted tweets to users based on unique characteristics, such as location. When it comes to advertising, this ability can be incredibly advantageous, as it allows companies to get specific information to the most relevant of their followers without bombarding others, which improves the overall effectiveness of their tweets.

Late last week, Twitter announced that it was going to start offering targeted Promoted Tweets, which give brands the opportunity to reach out to specific audiences on the social network without sending a tweet to all of its followers. Advertisers will be able to compose targeted tweets with the new Tweet Box on Twitter Ads, and (as is the case with all Promoted Tweets) they’ll only have to pay when users actually engage with them. Twitter ensures that those tweets that receive the most engagement are likely to appear more often.

Brands can use this new feature in a multitude of ways. For example, when a global company releases a product on different dates in a variety of countries, they can send tailored tweets to only those followers in a specific region on the launch date.

Twitter has been testing these new tailored Promoted Tweets for a few weeks now with British Airways, Coca-Cola, the Washington Post, and Wendy’s, but the feature is now available to all advertisers on the site.

Is Your Business Ready to Advertise on Twitter?

Mike Phillips — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Starting this month, Promoted Tweets – those messages paid for by advertisers – will start appearing in users' timelines, according to this leaked Twitter advertising webinar. This is just part of an overall advertising push by Twitter to get the company to realize its multi-billion dollar value estimates both on the part of investors and the company itself.

Twitter is ready to woo small and medium sized businesses as advertisers and it appears they are training their staff on how to attract these ad dollars. And while Promoted Tweets will likely make the biggest splash in terms of user attention (or outcry), the company is instructing its sales force to focus on Promoted Accounts, its pay-per-follower system.

So which option might be right for your business? That's difficult to say and it will largely depend on the actual dollars and cents involved. However, your company's goals will also be a deciding factor.

If promoting an individual product or piece of content, the Promoted Tweet could be the way to go. This, however, will rely on the popularity and relevance of that product to the Twitter audience (and the copy of the tweet itself). Should more followers be the goal, Promoted Account advertising could be the way to go. The Promoted Account, though, is only worth the expense if your company intends on maintaining an active presence on Twitter to continue engagement long after the promotion ends. Of course, a combination of the two could be very effective for those businesses with a Twitter-inclined user base.

According to analysis by eMarketer, Twitter is expected to generate $150 million in ad revenue this year, up from $45 million in 2010. But according to The Wall Street Journal, just over 100 small and medium sized businesses are currently advertising on Twitter.

From the WSJ article: "Twitter has built an audience, but in order to achieve the scale and revenue that Google and Facebook are seeing it needs to show that marketing dollars spent on the site can perform well for mom and pops, not just big companies," said Jonathan Strauss, chief executive of Snowball Factory Inc., which tracks marketing campaigns on Facebook and Twitter.

So, how is that going to happen? The Twitter sales force is certainly part of that mix. But perhaps even more important is the impending release of Twitter's self-service ad-buying platform – much like Google AdWords. Not only will this make ad buys more accessible but it will also be much more affordable than the early iterations of Twitter advertising.

What remains to be seen is the true value and expanse of the Twitter universe. Estimates place the number of registered Twitter accounts around 200 million. But, we all know that doesn't tell the entire story. For example, I have at least six Twitter accounts and not all of them are entirely active. EMarketer places the “active” number of Twitter accounts around 20 million or so, defined by users who access their Twitter account via any device at least once per month. But that also begs the question: If someone only uses Twitter once per month, what are the odds that person sees my Twitter ad?

There is plenty to be excited about as Twitter moves to beome a genuine business partner with global reach. But, there's also plenty of reason to take a wait-and-see approach. What will you do?

Twitter Rolls Out Ad Program

Linc Wonham — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:51:00 GMT

Twitter has unveiled its much-anticipated monetization plan, an advertising program it is calling Promoted Tweets. The ads are rolling out in Twitter search results pages, appearing when users search for keywords that marketers have bought to link to their ads.

Promoted Tweets allows marketers the opportunity to keep their messages from getting lost in the flow of real-time conversation on Twitter. Advertisers participating in the first phase of the program include Starbucks, Best Buy, Red Bull, Bravo, Sony Pictures and Virgin America, and they are being charged on a cost-per-thousand basis to start the program.

Eventually, Twitter COO Costolo said, Promoted Tweets will be included in regular tweet streams, depending on their relevance to users. Twitter will measure each ad's “resonance” based on how users react to the messages, and will remove any post that does not achieve a certain resonance score. Advertisers will not have to pay for posts that no longer appear as Promoted Tweets.