Twitter Invites Advertisers To Create Offers

Expanding its ecommerce efforts, Twitter is inviting advertisers to create credit-card-connected promotions, and share them with users directly in their timelines.

With their credit cards, users can redeem the new “Twitter Offers” in stores without the need for a coupon or numerical code.

Twitter Offers also represents a new way for marketers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns across channels, according to Tarun Jain, group product manager at Twitter.

“Advertisers will be able to attribute redemptions directly to their campaigns on Twitter, so that they can effectively measure the ROI from their promotions, even when redemption happens offline,” Jain explained in a blog post on Tuesday.

Twitter is bullish about its place in the ecommerce ecosystem. Most notably, the social giant recently began rolling out a “buy” button in tweets.

This year, U.S. ecommerce is expected to reach $304.1 billion -- nearly 20% of which will occur via mobile devices -- according to eMarketer.

Whether a significant share of consumers will shop via social channels remains to be seen. One recent study from DigitasLBi found that 20% of U.S. consumers would consider purchasing via social, yet a separate report from Capgemini found that shoppers are less interested in social media than they were just two years ago.

Still, Twitter is confident that Offers will scale quickly, particularly because it requires little from participating merchants. “They can use their existing payment network, there’s no change to the consumer purchase process, no employee training and no new hardware or software to install,” Jain explained.

Over the holiday shopping season, Twitter plans to test Offers with a select group of as-yet-unidentified brands.

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