Twitter Debates Product, Brand-Focused Campaigns To Achieve Best ROI

Over the short-term, product-focused campaigns on Twitter deliver a greater return on investment than those focused on brands, new research suggests. 

In terms of short-term sales, product-only campaigns delivered ROI of nearly $2 -- compared to about 30 cents for brand-only marketing -- according to fresh findings from marketing agency Data2Decisions.

Yet, purely product-focused marketing can backfire over the long term, as brand equity declines over time. 

Of course, the best balance between product-focused and brand-focused advertising on Twitter depends on the strategic objectives of each brand. Yet, D2D’s analysis showed that maintaining a balance of 70% product to 30% brand delivers short-term ROI without losing long-term brand equity.

In partnership with Dentsu Aegis Network, D2D conducted a series of marketing mix modeling (MMM) studies covering two years of Twitter advertising for four of Dentsu’s clients in three markets.

The research also found that Promoted Video can be particularly effective at driving ROI for marketers. In the UK, for example, Pringles experienced a return that was 3-times higher than their average media ROI.

Overall, Promoted Video proved up to 20% better at driving sales than other Twitter ad formats, D2D found.

Across the four MMM studies, the average ROI for Twitter Ads was 40% higher than the average media ROI for other channels, by D2D’s calculation.

Along with a healthy bump in monthly users, Twitter reported better-than-expect third-quarter sales, last week. While quarterly revenue of $590 million was down 4% year-over-year, it was still better than what analysts had predicted.  

Analysts seemed pleased with Twitter’s latest earnings performance.

“Underlying revenue trends provided confidence that the company is on track towards a resumption of top-line growth,” Brian Wieser, a senior analyst at Pivotal Research, said in a research note.

Wieser was particularly impressed by the fact that Twitter’s largest 100 advertisers increased spending on the platform by 23% globally, and 7% domestically.

“This reinforces our observation that many advertisers like and value Twitter as a marketing platform and continue to use it,” Wieser noted.

Casting a cloud over the strong earnings report, Twitter was forced to restate& nbsp;the audience estimates it reports to advertisers and investors, last week. In a letter to shareholders, the social giant said it overstated MAU counts for three years.

The restatement was due to incorrectly recording “1 million to 2 million users per quarter” from certain “third-party applications” to Twitter’s MAU count, it said.

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