Analytics Expert Blog

Note: The following is a post by Matt Lillig, who is the Senior Analytics Lead at Yahoo!.

Promoted Tweets

With the recent launch of ‘Promoted Tweets’, advertisers such as Best Buy, Starbucks, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, and Virgin America are lining up to grow their brand awareness using one of the hottest social networks around….Twitter.

According to Twitter on its official blog, “You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages.  Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand.” (see an example below with Starbucks).

Real Time Branding

Promoted Tweets could be a great service to help advertisers grow their brand in a viral fashion due to the fact that Twitter is often described as a real-time social network.  We all know how fast information moves across Twitter, right?  Promoted Tweets could be a great way for a company like Ford to quickly get the message out to the masses about its new Ford Explorer 2011 launch.  Or in the case of the Starbucks example, in the image above, offering free coffee to those who bring in a reusable tumbler on April 15^th.  One simple Tweet can lead to lots of sales.

Real Time Tracking

Now that advertisers have the ability to grow their brand in real-time thanks to Promoted Tweets, they also have the ability to track their Promoted Tweets in real-time thanks to Yahoo! Web Analytics.  Unlike other web analytics solutions, Yahoo! Web Analytics gives advertisers the flexibility to log into their account and see visitors right after they’ve reached their web site.  No more waiting for hours to see how their campaign is performing.  With real-time measurement, advertisers can follow the viral effect of the ad campaign and optimize their Twitter advertising efforts accordingly.

How It Works

Step 1 – Log Into Your YWA account and choose the Settings tab/link at the top of the page:

Step 2 – Select the ‘Manage Campaigns’ link under the ‘Campaigns & PPC Tracking’ header:

Step 3 – Select the ‘Add New Campaign’ button at the bottom of the page and choose ‘Other Campaign’ from the drop down menu:

Step 4 – Add your Campaign Properties:

- Campaign Name (Twitter Brand Campaign)

- Description (Real Time Tracking Of Twitter Campaign)

- Cost Type (Free Campaign)

- Campaign Start Date (Start)

- Campaign End Date (End if applicable)

- Show campaign In Reports (Check ‘Show’)

- Vendor (Twitter)

- URL Parameter Equals (ex: If you append your landing page URL with www.landingpage.com?cmp=twitter, then use “cmp=twitter”)

or

- Landing Page URL Contains (ex: If your landing page contains a unique keyword parameters such as www.landingpage.com?cmp=twitter+ford+explorer+2011, then use “twitter” or “ford” as long as those keywords are unique from any of your other ads.  Even better would be to use “twitter ford explorer 2011”)

or

- Landing Page URL Equals (ex: If your landing page contains unique parameters such as www.landingpage.com?cmp=twitter+ford+explorer+2011, then use you must add the exact landing page URL “www.landingpage.com?cmp=twitter+ford+explorer+2011”)

Results

Once Yahoo! Web Analytics has been set up to track the Twitter Promoted Tweet ad, advertisers will be able to see the clicks to their ad in real-time and be able to optimize the value of that ad in real time.

To view the Twitter report in Yahoo! Web Analytics, simply select:

-       Reports link (at the top of the page)

-       Marketing link (in the left hand navigation bar)

-       Campaigns link

-       Campaign Summary link

-       Other Campaigns button