The purpose of Twitter is to “serve the public conversation”, according to the company’s CFO Ned Segal – and to do that successfully “people need to be able to trust the information they see on Twitter, and they need to feel comfortable being part of the conversation”.
Segal told investors at a Morgan Stanley Technology Conference that the brand’s priority was to do everything it could to “prevent spammy and suspicious accounts from getting on to the service, to prevent them from amplifying Tweets or conversations in an inappropriate way”.
Transparency surrounding ad placements – who is buying them, what they’re paying for them and what demographic is being chased – “goes a long way towards allowing people or enabling people to trust the service and what they find there”, he said.
That and the extra barriers to spammers and placers of suspicious content are starting to pay off, he claimed.
“When we talk to the largest advertisers in the world, they applaud the work that we’re doing,” Segal said. “We’re doing it because it’s the right thing, we’re doing it because it will ultimately be a growth vector both around audience and around advertisers as they trust the platform more.”
While advertisers back Twitter’s efforts in this area, there was still work to be done in explaining how the best brands can use the platform, Segal admitted.
Twitter now places a lot of emphasis on two scenarios for brands to use Twitter in particular – launching something new, whether it’s a new movie or a new type of ketchup, and what Segal described as “connect with what is happening”.
“The Super Bowl is a great example of it. We had 30 of the 38 advertisers during the Super Bowl advertise on Twitter because when people who are on Twitter either because they weren’t watching the game anymore or because they were watching the game and they wanted to learn more about it and engage around it, it (Twitter) was a great place to amplify a message that was already somewhere else.”
But Segal conceded that Twitter still had to demonstrate its ad formats drive interest even if there is no direct click to purchase, MediaPost reported.
“We do have some direct-response advertising on Twitter but not as much as we should,” he said.
Segal told investors at a Morgan Stanley Technology Conference that the brand’s priority was to do everything it could to “prevent spammy and suspicious accounts from getting on to the service, to prevent them from amplifying Tweets or conversations in an inappropriate way”.
Transparency surrounding ad placements – who is buying them, what they’re paying for them and what demographic is being chased – “goes a long way towards allowing people or enabling people to trust the service and what they find there”, he said.
That and the extra barriers to spammers and placers of suspicious content are starting to pay off, he claimed.
“When we talk to the largest advertisers in the world, they applaud the work that we’re doing,” Segal said. “We’re doing it because it’s the right thing, we’re doing it because it will ultimately be a growth vector both around audience and around advertisers as they trust the platform more.”
While advertisers back Twitter’s efforts in this area, there was still work to be done in explaining how the best brands can use the platform, Segal admitted.
Twitter now places a lot of emphasis on two scenarios for brands to use Twitter in particular – launching something new, whether it’s a new movie or a new type of ketchup, and what Segal described as “connect with what is happening”.
“The Super Bowl is a great example of it. We had 30 of the 38 advertisers during the Super Bowl advertise on Twitter because when people who are on Twitter either because they weren’t watching the game anymore or because they were watching the game and they wanted to learn more about it and engage around it, it (Twitter) was a great place to amplify a message that was already somewhere else.”
But Segal conceded that Twitter still had to demonstrate its ad formats drive interest even if there is no direct click to purchase, MediaPost reported.
“We do have some direct-response advertising on Twitter but not as much as we should,” he said.
Sourced from Seeking Alpha, MediaPost; additional content by WARC staff
