Twitter is reeling a bit after losing its CEO, Dick Costolo, but it is heeding his words: one his final statements warned the micro-blog needs to reach users who don’t actually have Twitter accounts.
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Twitter announced on Thursday that it is renaming the Twitter Publisher Network to the Twitter Audience Platform and adding the ability for marketers to drive tweet engagements and video views with the service. It is also being tested by select clients driving mobile app installs and re-engagements.
Advertisers will have the option to turn their promoted tweets into different ad formats while still using the same creative and targeting elements.
Mobile is critical to Twitter’s future: Ads on mobile devices represented 88% of its $452 million in total advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2015.
Created as a result of Twitter’s acquisition of MoPub in September 2013 for $350 million, the now former Twitter Publisher Network (TPN) let advertisers push Promoted Tweets to apps that are a part of this network.
According to Twitter, the Twitter Audience Platform has already been getting great feedback from advertisers for the mobile app installs and re-engagement objectives. Marketers can run promoted tweets or videos on an app in MoPub’s network, which will hit all users of the app. If the user wants to retweet the promoted tweet seen in the app, clicking on the ad would take the user back to Twitter. Sony, for example, credits auto-play Twitter video ads for its recent success in promoting the upcoming horror-comedy film Goosebumps. A study it commissioned with MediaScience shows that consumers spent about 123 per cent more time with the ads compared to traditional interstitials. About 31,000 mobile apps are now active in the MoPub network, but not all of those will be available through the Twitter Audience Platform.
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“On the Twitter Audience Platform, we transform your Promoted Tweets into one of our immersive ad formats including video, native ads, banners, and interstitials”, says Farkas. But with TAP, Randive claims marketers will be able to reach more than double that number, around 700 million people. Twitter plans to expand the program to other objectives, such as website clicks and conversion. “However, this is clearly an incremental revenue opportunity here, but it’s not likely this will move the needle much in the near term, and will be overshadowed by the ad business on the core Twitter app”.
