The Altimeter group was pre-briefed by COO Dick Costolo of Twitter direct last week about this upcoming launch, we’ve had some time to think over what it means to the industry as well as to brand marketers.
Summary: Twitter has launched promoted tweets
Brands can now advertise promoted tweets on search pages, however the community has power over which tweets will appear measured by Twitter’s new metric called “Resonance” which factors in behaviors like the retweet, at, hash, avatar clicks. Brands can now purchase CPM based ads to promote these popular tweets at the top of a Twitter search term –even in categories they aren’t well known in spreading awareness and influence. Unlike traditional advertising or social marketing this is both a combination of earned media and paid media. This is a smart move for Twitter it taps into deep pockets of online advertisers without jeapordizing santity of the community as users will self select which tweets will resonate and thereby become promoted ads.
How it will work, a likely use case scenario:
- Users will continue to interact with each other, and popular tweets will receive a high ‘resonance’ score from Twitter. Some of these Tweets will be created by brands, and some by the users themselves.
- Tweets with heavy resonance can be purchased by advertisers in a CPM basis to appear as the first ’sponsored’ Tweet on a search term. The sponsored tweets will be clearly labeled and have a different background color.
- These promoted tweets will only stay if users continue to resonate with them, those that don’t will disseappear and a different tweet with resonation will appear.
Matrix: What Twitter’s Promoted Tweets Business Model Means to the Ecosystem
This has several implications to the ecosystem as a whole, we’ve broken down the impacts to the various players in this matrix:
| Player | Direct Impacts | What They Will Do | What No One Tells You |
| Finally gets a business model beyond search deal partnerships with potential to scale. Taps into deep pockets of online advertisers. | Experiment. Expect black and gray hat marketers to try to game this system, in order to obtain resonance. Twitter will constantly tune algoryhthem like Google does. | Expect this to cascade to their partners and grow into the ecosystem as Twitter aggregates resonation on other 3rd party sites | |
| Social Marketers | Brands can now finally buy influence over users by using using promoted tweets in the search page. | Brands will ask their customers to retweet to increase their resonance. Will build an inventory of top promotable tweets | Don’t go overboard, make sure you think of this in the larger context of integrated marketing. Avoid shiny tool syndrome. Must pay close attention to what terms are resonating with community to build inventory |
| Direct Marketers and Advertisers | Finally. Beyond traditional advertising direct marketers have skin in the social game | Flail. Many will try to buy their way in and obtain resonation without asking why a tweet resonates. Will fight over top searched terms in Twitter, expect a lot of contests to promote tweet engagement. | Expect tension between this marketer and the social marketer if education is not completed. |
| Users | Have power over which promoted ads will stay visible | Initially be shocked by changes, then learn they can help self select tweets that will be promoted.. In the real time resonace world users have a lot more power | Power tweeters like celebs and digerati will be targeted by marketers to engage and resonate tweets. Twitter users that retweet tweets may be surprised to see their promoted tweets in search engine results ads. |
| Developers and Agencies | Finally, a goal they can aim for will focus business models to glean ‘resonance’ | Developers are waiting with baited breathe for Chirp developers conference this week to see how this will be tied in. Twitter has indicated that promoted tweets will spread to clients, expect revenue sharing to be offered | Expect half a dozen vendors and agencies to approach brands in the next quarter offering the ability to increase ‘resonance’ and case studies will show increase in resonance. |
| Competitors and Search Engines: | Beyond a new player being in town a new form of advertising is afoot changing the game. | Expect nervous deals to come to the table on how search engine results can factor in Twitter’s resonance. Yet expect players like MSFT and Yahoo to quickly launch their version of defining how the social web should be categorized. | They will have the advantage of built in ad base of advertisers and millions more users. Google and Bing will fold this in and reward resonance and combine with page rank, or will create their own metric to reward social engagement |
For Resonation, Brands Must Pay Closer Attention To Users –This Isn’t Traditional Spray And Pray
Power continues to be in the hands of the users, however brands that pay attention to why tweets resonate will have a leg up. Recognize this is early days, many will experiment, here’s how you should approach this space.
- Change your mindset: This is a combination of organic and paid ads, you’ll need skills from both worlds to be successful. Direct marketers should educate social marketers, and social marketers should explain how resonation occurs in the conversational web. Remember, this gives top tweets staying power beyond the constant stream of chatter.
- How to pick which tweet to promote: First, monitor which tweets are already resonating with your brand, take note of what is causing it to resonate and in what context. Secondly, recognize that these tweets should have long term impact, not a daily special as the tweet is promoted, users will interact with it, forcing it into a viral loop. For best results, experiment with promoting tweets from your customers –not just those that you create.
- Twitter users have power over which promoted Tweets will work: Remember they get to choose which tweets can be put into the advertising inventory as their interaction will self select which tweets can become promoted. Secondly, promoted tweets that don’t yield community engagement will also fall off the stream. is that in the real time resonace world users have a lot more power.
- A New Yardstick: ‘Resonance’ is the Page Rank of Microblogging: Advertising agencies and social marketing agencies will come out of woodwork, most will do it wrong. Look for a sophisticated partner that knows the value of social conversational marketing to create an inventory and the long term experience of an advertising agency that knows the value of advertising placement. Expect resonation to also cascade to other social networks like Facebook and even community platforms and content management systems to derive what content should surface. Twitter has made nods to new dashboards to appear, expect your agency partners to align around resonation as the ROI.
This post is the result of the collaborative efforts of the Altimeter team including Charlene Li (Leadership), Alan Webber (User Experience/Government), Michael Gartenberg (Mobile) and Christine Tran (Research). See Twitter blog, AdAge, and NYT for details.
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