Is Social Media a strong platform for advertising revenue growth? This year, Twitter announced a sustainability plan solely based on boosting advertising partners through their “Promoted Tweets” program, a way of paying Twitter users with huge followings to retweet ads. Twitter’s latest ad venture? Promoted trends.
Twitter’s promoted trends program.
Spending on social media advertising has reached 1.7 billion this year alone. Giving users the job of advertising movers can be a little scary for corporations, who must ask themselves – who do you entrust your brand to? Advertisers who embrace this new form of advertising are, essentially, letting go their control of context as well as suitability. This loss of control is because social media reaches ALL – for those participating advertisers, that could result in a major backlash (and spam!).
One problem facing social media advertising is mind set. People don’t usually go to their Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds for consumer direction. Twitter creates an environment where target marketing is completely lost and the success of advertising within this context is based on chance, not execution. Or is it? Is Twitter tying their boots to a broken wheel? RetailOnlineIntegration.com recently called this reliance on marketing tactics for revenue as “no easy feat.”
Despite doubts, digital agencies are popping up everywhere. SocialMedia.com is a fixer agency which takes what they call “standard ads” and social media-izes them – turning them into “social experiences.” Which brings us back to marketing, objectives, creative context and media strategy having to work in sync to accomplish what it sets out to do. No media is a hero, no media is a loser… and well, let’s not forget (since the very beginning) that all ads are social experiences.