By Jasmine Nguyen
Happy New Year everyone! We’ve missed you over the holiday break. To start 2015, here’s a brief introduction to get you acquainted with advertising on Twitter, Instagram, and Gmail Sponsored Promotions, if you haven’t been so already.
1. Twitter Ads
While it may seem that Twitter is a much simpler platform than Facebook with only 140 characters per Tweet, there are actually a good number of advertising options on the platform, ranging from Promoted Tweets, Lead Generation Cards, Promoted Accounts, Promoted Trends, to Promoted Video. There is also no minimum in spending as of now, so if you have wanted to try out Twitter for a while, now would be a good time to explore and test their ad options.
Let us briefly walk you through their product line:
Promoted Tweets:
These are regular Tweets that can be promoted to reach your desired audience via keywords/interest targeting and drive traffic to your designated click-through link. Promoted Tweets will appear at the top of Twitter search pages or on home timelines of relevant users (they will only appear once at the top of timeline per person then will scroll down like a regular Tweet).
Lead Generation Card:
Twitter Card is a tool to help advertisers connect with their audience off-Twitter. For example, you can use Twitter Card to target relevant/potential customers based on their interests and run a promotion on the Card itself to generate leads in the form of email contacts, etc… You are then able to download this list straight from Twitter Ads into a CSV spreadsheet.
Promoted Accounts:
If you want to boost your user base and follower number, it is best to utilize promoted account to appear in front of a wider audience on Twitter and attract new customers who have not been exposed to your brand before. Promoted Account will appear in home timelines, who to follow, and search results of relevant interests.
Promoted Trends:
Promoted trends reflect messages that are time-, context-, and event-sensitive to Twitter users and appear at the top of the Trending Topic list. Trends can be set by a catchy #hashtag or term that tie into brand/advertiser’s message. Advertisers are able to keep a relevant Promoted Tweet at the top of the Promoted Trend’s search results.
Promoted Videos:
If anything could appeal more to the music industry, then it is the relatively new Twitter Promoted Video. Whether it is introducing new music or staying relevant with your audience via robust video messages, Promoted Video let brands drive engagement with cost per view pricing (no automate play) and unconstraint video length.
2. Instagram Sponsored Posts
Launched in 2013, Instagram Sponsored Posts are currently available only to selected brands with an establish Instagram presence and a spending of hundreds of thousand dollars or more in yearly contracts. While costly, IG boasts an extremely young, affluent user base and is the fastest-growing social site around the world. Although IG’s ad partners still belong to an exclusive club of prominent brands, it is not a bad idea to start building up your artists/brands’ IG accounts in preparation for their public rolling-out day (hopefully soon!).
3. Gmail Sponsored Promotions
The Gmail Sponsored Promotion has been available to all advertisers since early 2014 and offers very advanced targeting options coupling with flexible bidding structure. The only customized component is the required HTML creative that needs to be planned in advance and created just for Gmail. With GSP, you can target audience based on their email addresses, email subject line, job title, domain, and product category, using mailing list or keywords. Other targeting classifications are by location, gender, age, domain, and interests. The standard GSP campaigns we run usually receive a very low cost per click but keep in mind that this is different from cost per click to website – which could potentially be higher than the normal CPC which actually means cost per open in GSP context.