Twitter Paid Advertising
I recently posted about the Facebook algorithm (EdgeRank) and the future of Facebook advertising. In a similar vein I’m now going to look at Twitter from a paid media perspective (also quite timely as it was only today that Twitter announced these advertising amendments).
Summary: To cut a long story short Twitter uses a similar(ish) system to Facebook’s EdgeRank and Google’s Quality Score.
Detail – 2 types of promotion for 2 types of targeting
2 types of promotion = Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets.
2 types of targeting = Both revolve around topical interests and with tailored messages to the right people you should expect to see CTR around the 1% mark.
a/ Interest Categories – 350+ interest categories exist (see screenshot above – it explains itself)
b/ Along a similar vein to refined GDN targeting; this next one allows you to create custom segments by specifying certain @usernames that are relevant to your promotion/ product/ service/ brand. As an example if I’m promoting an SEO conference I can create a custom audience by adding @usernames (e.g. @mattcutts) of relates SEO experts thus targeting related followers of SEO wizardry/Ninja-ism i.e. go beyond your followers and users with similar interests and target relevant audiences.
Prices? Start from 1p but you are looking to easily go in to double p figures for clicks (As its run on an auction I cannot give you an exact price). The lowest prices paid are from those who have managed to garner high CTR/ engagement rates with reasonable bid prices (you can win even if others bid higher).
Think EdgeRank breeds with Quality Score and creates a slightly inefficient yet brand led love child.