In case you wondered about the power of Twitter, Coke would like to tell you that it’s “phenominal”. After the company purchased the second ever “promoted tweet“, it saw 85 million impressions the first 24 hours.
According to articles on Yahoo Finance and the Financial Times, those 85 million impressions translated to a rate of 6% engagement, versus a typical .02% for any other type of online ad.
So did Twitter just set a heavy foot into the advertising industry? For businesses that want to tap into an as-yet-untouched market, the answer is a resounding yes. Of course, timing is still everything, and Coke decided to run the tweet during the US vs England World Cup match. Given that the US and the UK are two of the largest populations on Twitter, it only makes sense.
According to Carol Kruse, Coke’s digital marketing lead, the company is still testing the waters with newer forms of social media advertising:
“We have formed fabulous relationships with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter,” she said. “We get a lot of first looks and we jumped on that one [promoted tweets] immediately. It is the perfect example of us wanting to learn in this space.”
The promoted tweets, thus far, have seen good reviews from Twitter users. The ads don’t appear to be overly-intrusive, but still manage to catch enough attention to gather good results for the businesses that purchase them.
Our thanks to eagle-eyed reader @jangles for finding a shot of the tweet.
Can you post a screenshot of that coca cola featured Tweet maybe? Wondering what it looks like…
I’d love to…if I could have found it. I suppose that the lack of staying power of Twitter advertising is worth a look, in and of itself.
Tweet now included :)
Didn’t see it as well. That was fast. :)
I didn’t saw a promoted tweet, but I did see a promoted trending topic (#wc2010), paid by Coca Cola
This concerns “the second ‘promoted tweet’ ever”. My guess is a first mover advantage… I wonder if this is a first sign of a next tsunami in advertising business and what the consequences would be. What is your guess?
Well, if we look at Facebook as an example – with their promotions, not promoted tweets – those promotions have had significant usage beyond “first movers”. For example, Subway waited a long time before they got a Facebook page, and then went all out on Facebook (and other outlets, including TV) and got pretty good results. Though it’s certainly still too early to tell, personally, I think Coke’s results speak more to a “social media” effect rather than a Twitter effect specifically.
Too bad that impressions don’t equal sales for Coke. Now if they could somehow show me that in lead to a sales bump than I would say it was a good marketing tactic
Cok’s promoted tweet: “85 million impressions the first 24 hours” RT @CocaCola Congrats to ENG & USA on moving forward. Lots of celebrations across the globe. How’s your celebration? http://CokeURL.com/63fx #WC2010
I’m studying the role social media users are paying in helping to promote/advertise/market and do PR for major brands. The big question for me is what are the social media users (bloggers) getting out of it? Is it a fair deal for both parties?
I’d love to know who they paid and how much? It seems as if they pay Twitter rather than individual Twitter users….
Many thanks for writing about this. I’m adding you to my feed reader right now:)
The big thing with Twitter is it is taking the 3rd parties (television, etc) out of the equation and letting companies/celebrities market directly to their base. It’s def became a first mover thing that has started catching on