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On the very next day of the iPhone 6 launch, Samsung India ensured that its hashtag for Galaxy Note 4 topped even the latest Apple phone on Twitter's trend list. Its sponsored tweets targetting potential customers on a day when the buzz was guaranteed to be high around the iPhone 6, are the kind of opportunities that Twitter India wants more advertisers to leverage.
Twitter's international markets, including India, increased their revenue contribution in the last quarter. Ad revenues - bulk of its income - from these increased. Ad revenue per 1,000 timeline views increased to $0.75, up 152 per cent year-on-year ($0.30). Timeline views are the total number of timeline requests by logged-in users (including page refresh and search results requests).
Analysts say it was not just heightened engagement (such as around Twitter's messages for every Fifa World Cup 2014 match) but new advertising products too. But the ad revenues are still not a spot on the US ad revenues per 1,000 timeline views, at $3.87. And, Twitter needs to move fast in certain markets. Research firm, eMarketer, says that more than 40 per cent of its users will be in Asia-Pacific by as soon as 2018. That is perhaps why Parminder Singh, managing director, Southeast Asia/India/MENA, says he has spent the last 10 months helping brands understand the moments they can use to spur enagagement. "There are cultural moments such as Diwali and everyday moments when a user mentions something that might be relevant to a brand," he says.
According to Harshil Karia, co-founder and online strategist at FoxyMoron, which has used Twitter for a host of brands, over the last six months, Twitter has been working on fine-tuning the advertising platform: "It has been working to get brands more relevant followers, through the sponsored products such as tweets, accounts and trends which target users with interests specific to a brand".
Singh says that Twitter can identify where in the purchase cycle a user lies, given the keywords in her tweets, making it easier to tailor messages. If the owner of a car happens to mention the brand, it could be an opportunity not only for all kinds of car-related brands for promoted tweets but even for the same marque to upsell." Car conversations have gone up by 90 per cent year-on-year, and fitness 600 per cent, ripe for sportswear brands.
Twitter's new marketing tool involves two brands at the same time. Amplify, which it debuted with the India-England series, saw Star Sports as the content provider (telecast rights) and Vodafone as the brought-to-you sponsor on Twitter. "The engagement was smartly spurred by a question on the user's views on cricket (who should lead the team). So, it created conversation about a match in real-time," says Parry. Twitter is also bringing its global partnership with Kantar to India to measure second-screen activity for broadcasters to use.
What after conversations
Twitter knows it has to do more than chirp about conversations. It is sharing analytics proactively. Karia says, "It was two years late but analytics make brands take a platform more seriously."
To highlight its efficacy, Twitter has surveyed around 500 users for Diwali shopping (a big moment for brands too). Rather than just engage in virtual repartee, 78 per cent, surprisingly, said they use Twitter for research and exploration. As much as 84 per cent said they either go to a store or online after reading promoted tweets. But the messaging has to be about exclusive deals tailored for users, says Singh.
Customised tweets
Karia says, "The advantage on Twitter is the quality of users and the conversations; we tend to find that the audience is a lot more intelligent in their conversations. Of course, this has also to do with a smaller reach and the perception that Twitter is a more global platform." Karia has done direct response campaigns on Twitter, and says it is more amenable to real-time response.
For Asian Paints, Karia's team had asked target users to say what beautiful homes meant for them, and the team sent a customised creative. For Femina, customised covers were shared in exchange for tweets on what makes the user 'unstoppable'. Karia says, "There is immediate gratification."
Singh says that the engagement rate could go upto 10 per cent for successful campaigns (where users retweet, add to favourites or share a tweet) and hover around 3-5 per cent on average, while the industry average is 0.5 per cent.
Miles to fly
However, Twitter still has a lot of catching up with Facebook in India. Against the latter's over 100 million active users, the last reported Twitter user base in India was 30-33 million and market observers say active users would be much less. Twitter's advertising rates, according to agencies, are the highest. So, for the sponsored videos which are either paid for when a user downloads (Twitter) or views, Facebook is said to charge around Rs 500 per 1,000 views, while Twitter charges around Rs 1,500 and YouTube half of Twitter's rate. Cost per engagement (sharing etc.) of a sponsored feed or tweet would be around Rs 5 on Facebook and Rs 15 on Twitter.
"The content has a limited lifecycle because of the real-time feed. It is both an advantage and a drawback. The shelf-life of a tweet is barely five seconds before the next refresh. So, the discoverability of message is a problem, while on Facebook the content stays longer and can reappear more often," says Karia. While large brands such as Nestle have command centres for their Twitter and social media management, it could be daunting for smaller brands to man the platform, though Singh says brands could either auto-programme promoted tweets or easily choose a group of influencers to talk to directly who would then retweet. Facebook, on the other hand, is pushing small and medium businesses to come onboard as advertisers.
As a result, Twitter is still more optional for advertisers and not a necessary fixture in brands' media spends. "But given it is a meritocratic platform (popularity prioritises which tweets get higlighted), brands can still make the most of it through partnerships with influencers, putting out relevant content," says Karia. Singh is working to ensure that brands don't flutter when spending on Twitter.
