Ad Execs Throw Cold Water On Twitter Click-Through Boasts

New York Times et al, Tuesday, October 12, 2010 11:52 AM

• Comment
• Recommend (13)
• Tweet
• 

Since debuting its ad products to mixed reviews this year, some analysts have questioned Twitter's viability as a mass marketing channel. Yet, new research shows that the micro-blogging service is excelling in one critical area: click-through rates.

After analyzing more than a million referral messages, marketing firm SocialTwist found that Twitter yielded an average of 19.04 clicks -- making it by far the most effective tool for click-throughs. By comparison, Facebook only produced 2.87 clicks on average.

"This is great news for Twitter, which has hinged its business on Promoted Tweets and Trends, tweet-size ads that companies purchase for $100,000 a day," writes Fast Company. "With such a high click-through rate, it's no wonder new Twitter CEO Dick Costolo boasted yesterday [in The New York Times] that the company has 'cracked the code on a new form of advertising, and we feel like we've got a hit on our hands.'"

Among social networking sites, Facebook is by far the most preferred service for sharing, making up more than 78% of usage, according to SocialTwist.

Bigger picture, social networking sites saw a 10% increase in usage, and a 16% bump in click-throughs in the last year. To put that number into perspective, email still accounts for 55% of referrals.

As Twitter shows, however, social networking sites are far more effective when it comes to click-throughs -- accounting for more than 60% of the market share.

Since debuting its highly-anticipated ad products in April, Twitter has signed over 30 top brands, including Coca-Cola, Virgin America and Starbucks. Yet, as The Wall Street Journal reported late last month, reviews have been mixed. Regarding Twitter's ad products, Universal McCann EVP David Cohen told The Journal: "The jury is out."

In an interview with The New York Times, Twitter's newly appointed CEO Dick Costolo said the company would have more than 100 advertisers by the end of the year.

What's more, "According to Twitter, on average 5 percent of people who see Promoted Tweets are clicking on, replying to or forwarding the ads -- much higher than the less than 1 percent of people who click on a typical display ad," reports The Times.

Thought bullish on Twitter, Curt Hecht, chief executive of VivaKi Nerve Center, tells The Times that one reason so many people are clicking on Twitter ads might be the initial novelty.

As ad execs tell The Times, meanwhile, another issue for Twitter is that its free services are presently enough to keep clients happy.

"Every one of our clients has Twitter as a part of their social media strategy, but at the moment we're not seeing a tremendous amount of interest in the specific packages that Twitter is offering," Aaron Shapiro, a partner at Interpublic's Huge, tells The Times.

• Comment
• Recommend (13)
• Tweet
• 

0 comments on "Ad Execs Throw Cold Water On Twitter Click-Through Boasts".

1. Douglas Ferguson from College of Charleston
   

   commented on: October 12, 2010 at 3:30 p.m.

   Of course there is more clicking-through on Twitter. It's a shorthand low-info form of communicating, where you have to click links (sites, photos, etc.) all the time to accomplish anything. Facebook, on the other hand, shows everything at once, so users get in the habit of scrolling, with very little need to click. So ads may indeed be getting clicked less -- because everything is getting clicked less.

   Good for Twitter. If I had interactive ads to run, I might want Facebook's bigger tent at first, but I'd probably opt for the site where users are more accustomed to clicking-through. What good is a larger number of target customers who are less likely to click-through?

Leave a Comment