Twitter aims to attract "biggest brands"

NEW YORK: Twitter, the microblogging platform, is seeking to attract the "very biggest brands" to its ad services, rather than simply focus on the long tail of small businesses often relied upon elsewhere. 

The social media site has formed a tie-up with American broadcaster NBC that is linked to the Olympic Games in an attempt to boost the social platform's profile. It is now hoping to engage marketers of a similar stature.

"We can service the very biggest brands in the marketplace," Adam Bain, the firm's president of revenue, told Reuters. "The conversation that's happening on TV, or happening live, is also happening on Twitter. That's very valuable."

PepsiCo, the food and beverage group, has already leveraged serveral tools provided by Twitter as part of the "Live For Now" campaign that aims to rejuvenate its eponymous cola brand.

Executives from PepsiCo and Twitter met regularly to discuss the insights gleaned from the online buzz among consumers while developing this campaign, which was primarily based around music.

During the month of June 2012 the company uploaded numerous music videos to its Twitter page after assessing which artists were generating the most interest, and gave out free downloads.

A concert by pop singer Katy Perry was streamed on its Twitter page, and several "promoted tweets" flagged up such efforts. Overall, 24% of Twitter members who were exposed to Pepsi's paid tweets interacted with them in some way.

"We saw some phenomenal results," said Shiv Singh, global head of digital marketing for Pepsi Beverages, said. He added the organisation was "extremely likely" to increase its Twitter spending. 

American Express, the financial services firm; Sephora, the cosmetics retailer, Best Buy, the electronics retailer, and Virgin Atlantic, the airline, have all also recently been working with Twitter.

Given that Google's paid search model has mainly relied on sales to smaller advertisers, and that Facebook is still trying to "educate" blue chip corporations about the payback from its ads, both opportunities and obstacles may await Twitter.

"The biggest bucket that's untapped in digital advertising is brand marketing," said Jonah Goodhart, the founder of Moat, the advertising technology company.

Data sourced from Reuters; additional content by Warc staff, 3 August 2012

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