Promoted Tweets
July 19, 2010 • Article by Nettie Wells
Twitter has finally rolled out the first of its big advertising platforms with the release of Promoted Tweets. For now they are only beta testing with a “handful of innovative advertising partners” such as Red Bull and Sony but if the first phase goes as planned then we could see a big shift in the way advertisers approach their fellow Tweeters.
So what is a Promoted Tweet? It’s actually very simple – Promoted Tweets are simply ordinary tweets that businesses can highlight to a wider group of users by paying to have them placed at the top of Twitter.com search results pages. Rather than operating a pay per click service which would prove both costly and impractical on the Twitter network, you pay for the number of Impressions your Promoted Tweet receives.
As you can see from the Starbucks Example above, although Promoted Tweets will be clearly labelled as being promoted, they will exist just as regular tweets and will be sent to the timelines of anyone who follows the brand. However, if users fail to interact with a Promoted Tweet as they might with organic tweets (by replying, retweeting, favouriting or following the brand etc) then Twitter will simply stop showing the Tweet. It’s that simple.
So if and when Twitter opens Promoted Tweets to everyone, there is one thing that advertisers should remember. Don’t just spam your fellow Tweeters, make the content new and interesting or you might as well not bother at all.