Twitter - "best for users, and advertizers"

Twitter - "best for users, and advertizers"

B92 had a chance to talk to Katie Lampa, head of sales operations at Twitter, about the company's plans and its stance toward users, but also advertisers.

Where lies the power of Twitter, compared to other social networks? How many users Twitter has and what are the expectations of Twitter from this (Balkan) region?

"Our focus is on creating a great experience for our users and delivering ROI for advertisers. We have more than 271 million users worldwide and Tweets are seen everywhere from TV shows, to newspapers, to websites to on our own platform.

Because Twitter is a real time companion to what’s happening in your world, we are closely aligned with people’s interests. As a result we can match brands’ content with people who are likely to find it interesting. And our high engagement rates and happy advertisers prove this is working well.

Twitter’s mobile nature also makes us an extremely attractive option for brands - on our most recent earnings call we reported that 80% of our ad revenue comes from mobile."

Does Twitter help democratization of society? We’ve seen in past protests that started with Twitter, and some countries forbid the use of Twitter.. What is your opinion of censure that is lately much more present in certain countries?

"Twitter enables people and organizations to publicly share brief messages instantly around the world. There is no other service on the planet that is simultaneously public, real-time, conversational and widely distributed. Twitter gives people the opportunity to connect with each other –– be it your friend or someone you don’t know halfway around the world –– and discover what’s happening in real time."

How do the brands in the world rely on Twitter while trying to reach their audience?

"With more than 500 million Tweets a day and 271 million active users, people turn to Twitter to bring them closer to the things they care about, whether it’s the news that affects their lives or the businesses down the street. On Twitter, people talk about what they care about and what’s happening around them right now, including your business. This gives all Serbian brands and businesses powerful context to connect their message to what’s most meaningful to their customers in real time. Engaging with real-time Tweets can influence conversations in a way that can help build all Serbian brands." We see that some social networks don’t allow brands to show to their fans all of their content that they’re placing on fan pages. What is the policy of Twitter regarding this matter and does it pay off to create a community of followers?

"Businesses are not and will not be charged for your organic activity on Twitter which all your followers can see, however, if a business would like to reach a wider audience they can amplify their Tweets through Twitter Ads."

How Twitter users react to commercials, since Twitter had no ads until lately? Does company plan to introduce paid Twitter account without ads?

"You’ll never be charged for your organic activity on Twitter. Our number one priority is always protecting the user experience. The way we rolled out advertising on Twitter - which was only introduced four years after the consumer service launched - was with our users’ best interests in mind."

What is happening when promoted tweets/trends give false information? Can it be prevented?

"We have clear guidelines and policies for advertiser outlined on our support pages."

Does the company plan to step into the world of wearable technology in order to consolidate its position as the companies as Amazon, Facebook already did?

"We’ve no plans for this at the moment ."

Where lies the future of social networks and will it incline more to users or to advertisers?

"There’s a lot of opportunity ahead of us in terms of what we can and need to do in order to reach every person on the planet. We’re constantly evolving the product and running experiments to make Twitter even better and easier to use for both users and advertisers. "

Httpool partnership

Serbian and other central and eastern European companies interested in advertising via Twitter can now do so thanks to the cooperation Twitter established with Httpool, its sales partner for the region.

A recent announcement said that Twitter Ads were now available in 12 additional markets: Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine and Portugal.

"Twitter fits perfectly in Httpool's 'cross channel ad network' offer. Our partnership will allow Httpool to provide domestic advertisers with even better access to the most relevant domestic and international channels from one place," Httpool Serbia Managing Director Rade Tričković commented.

Httpool's role as Twitters direct sales partner means that brands have access to all products, services, and support made available by Twitter.