The 5 Twitter Ads formats for Online Businesses

Twitter’s mission is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without any barriers. With more than 241 million monthly active users, Twitter is one of the most powerful social network in the world with 500 million tweets sent every day. As an e-merchant, it is profitable for you to use the social networks as a way to promote your product and make them visible to your consumers. That is why Twitter has developped an advertising ecosystem in order to help e-merchants to increase  your sells. These tools are the following one : Promoted Trends, Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets, Keyword Targeting and Video Ads. For this placement, advertisers have to pay for their visilibity on Twitter.

Promoted Trends

Promoted Trends give an opportunity to any brand to provoke conversation about a certain topic on Twitter with its community. With Promoted Trends, Twitter users will be more likely to use your hashtag as it will constantly be displayed at the top of the Trending Topics list and marked as “Promoted” with the little yellow icon.

Promoted Accounts

Twitter’s Promoted Accounts are part of the Who to Follow list which suggests to any users a group of relevant accounts to follow which are not currently followed by a given user but that he may find interesting. Promoted Accounts help introduce an even wider variety of accounts people may enjoy. Brands can pay to be artificially added to the list of accounts suggested to users and bypass Twitter’s algorithm being used by default.

Promoted Tweets

Promoted tweets are messages that have been artificially put in the spotlight by brands who want to spark engagement and get more visibility at a given moment. Brands use Promoted Tweets as advertising shelve space to be rent on demand in order to create engagement from their followers but also on a larger basis. Promoted Tweets are generally situated at the top of the Twitter timeline but can also be found all along the timeline, anytime users check it during the day.

Just like for Promoted Trends, Promoted Tweets are recognizable with the yellow colored “Promoted” icon. Even if Promoted Tweets are different from regular tweets – considering they are intrusive as any unsolicited advertising message – they are the same. People can retweet, reply and favorite your promoted tweet.

Why use Promoted Tweets :

If your goal is to drive a particular action via Twitter or drive awareness for your business, Promoted Tweets are a great way to promote engaging content that includes a call to action to users.  Here are a few example of use case where Promoted Tweets can help:

• Offer coupons and deals in your tweets
• Drive leads
• Promote sales and giveaways,
• Expand the reach of your blog posts, white papers, etc.
• Connect with influencers and brand advocates,
• Promote events and product launches,

Keyword Targeting

This tool allow you to target users through specific keywords in your tweets. According to Twitter, these tweets are a good way to identify signals of intent and to reach users at the right moment and in the right context. The payment model of Twitter is a payment by the click or the number of retweets or favorites the tweet generated. The advantage of this tool is the fact that advertisers can make a targeting by keywords in timeline, location, interest, gender and device.

Video Ads

Considering video ads formats become a powerful media over time, Twitter decided to create video ads on its platform. The concept of Video Ads consist in videos embedded in a tweet by brands to promote content. Video Ads are a good way for e-tailers to let people know about their offer.

New : Click-to-Call tweets :

As part of its continuous efforts to build more effective advertising spaces for advertisers, the microblogging platform has been experimenting a new way to generate leads and induce incoming calls from potential customers, all with the click of a finger on a tweet. According rumors, Twitter is beta-testing a “click-to-call” button, which would allow mobile users to engage with a Twitter ad by calling the advertiser directly. This new ad format is very likely to be confirmed in the following weeks or months because it would give Twitter the opportunity to break into the local advertising market and broaden its ad base.