Twitter
got itself a makeover last week- including a brand new logo - and all apparently
for the benefit of advertisers.
Two years
ago Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage at the Cannes Advertising Festival. Last
week Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter, stood in exactly the same position,
pitching his vision for the future to the marketing industry. The event has
always attracted executives, but the social media boom has widened its audience,
and last week the world’s media had their cameras firmly trained on the stage.
Consequently Dorsey won Media Person of the Year and dominated the press.
Twitter’s
plan is to improve its technology, allowing multi-national brands to manage
conservations and campaigns in different countries from the same accounts.
The
Californian-based company has high aspirations and plans to roll out its
advertising products – promoted tweets, promoted trends and promoted accounts -
to 50 territories by the end of the year.
It
seems the six-year-old tech company has a lot on its plate for the next six
months. Un-phased by the amount of work to do, Chief Executive Dick Costolo
says ‘we are still growing quite fast month on month in the UK, Mexico, Spain,
Italy, France.’
It
seems Twitter – for now at least - has escaped the backlash Facebook has had to
endure with regards to advertising on the site. Since the Twitter London office
opened last year, more than 140 advertisers have signed up.
Plans
for office openings in Latin America, particularly Brazil, are next on the
agenda. Activity in Western Europe is also set to increase, with Spain and
Germany the first countries to get their hands on the new product.
Many
brands have been supportive of the opportunities Twitter has been offering.
Absolute Radio said they wouldn’t have had the ‘immediacy at a massive scale’
from a YouTube, MSN or Yahoo! Homepage takeover.
The
station gave away £250 every hour for 24 hours to winners tweeting what was
playing using the promoted hashtag, #nowplaying.
And the results – there was a 7%
increase of listeners on the day of competition, 76,000 mentions and cost per
engagement calculated at 4p.
For
now at least, it looks as though Twitter has reason to be chirpy.
By
Stephanie Rock