Twitter’s advertising services meet mixed reviews


28 Sep 2010

Twitter’s trial run of advertising services, including promoted tweets and trending topics, has had mixed reviews among marketers.

According to theWall Street Journal, the ad services are still in testing, with only a small amount of partners.

‘Promoted tweets’ is a service where marketers pay to have their messages listed as the first result when a user conducts a search on Twitter.

This could be highly profitable, considering that Twitter handled 130 million searches in August, according to comScore Inc.

In this trial run, Twitter found that 5pc of those who see promoted tweets interact with them and 80pc of brands who have purchased them would do so again.

The trial run of the service has been given for free, but Twitter will sell promoted tweets for upwards of $100,000, according to WSJ.

Coca-Cola has reported a 6pc engagement rate. Virgin America’s Twitter campaign credits promoted tweets for its fifth-highest sales day ever.

PepsiCo and Best Buy, however, have yet to consider partaking in Twitter ads again.

“It is a totally new and different kind of ad format. There is a lot we still have to learn and think about,” says Shiv Singh, head of digital for PepsiCo Beverages.

Marketers have said they want more targeting options and better metrics to fully track the impact of their campaigns.