Seven Ways Marketers Would Fix Twitter; Ad Executives Speak Out About How the Messaging Service Can Win Them Over

Seven Ways Marketers Would Fix Twitter

Ad Executives Speak Out About How the Messaging Service Can Win Them Over

SUZANNE VRANICA

Updated Nov. 6, 2013 7:47 p.m. ET

As Twitter Inc. prepares to make its stock-market debut, a fundamental question looms: Can the messaging service turn its army of followers into a moneymaking business? Although the service and its 140-character messages has become part of popular culture, many marketers still view Twitter as experimental. It doesn’t have enough scale for some marketers, and some advertisers want more information about Twitter’s users and more proof that ads on the service work. Over the past year, Twitter has taken steps to be more advertiser friendly, such as adding new services.“Twitter has made significant improvements in the ability to target specific groups, which has made the platform much more desirable,” said Steve Shannon, vice president of marketing at Hyundai Motor America. For example, Mr. Shannon says that Twitter has helped them identify consumers that are in the market for a car.

Still, others say the company has to do more. The Wall Street Journal asked several ad executives for their thoughts on what Twitter can do to be more appealing to marketers.

Unilever

We are fans of Twitter and what it enables us to do. Although we are using Twitter for many of our brands, there are a few things that Twitter could do more of or differently to help advertisers like us. Use research to show that the very high levels of engagement that Twitter commands translate into increased brand equity. We are very encouraged to see them partnering with Datalogix [an ad research company], so we’re confident that this is underway, but it is crucial that this link is made, in order to drive more advertisers to invest in the platform.

—Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer at Unilever ULVR.LN -2.21%PLC

LG Electronics

I want to find out if Twitter is a viable ad platform. I want to see if their ad products give us brand favorability and how it drives purchase indicators such as, ‘Are you visiting my site?’ or, ‘Are you engaging with my products?’

We have used Twitter’s TV targeting product [which allows marketers to send tweets to consumers that Twitter says have just seen the marketers’ TV ads]. It’s very promising as a product. I want to see more TV related ad products and I want them to share analytics. We have a fairly sizable investment in Twitter and we are looking closely at how it performs.

—Christopher Ray, digital marketing director at LG Electronics 066570.SE -0.44% USA Inc.

Giant Spoon

Beyond Twitter’s Trending Topics service, Twitter needs to help users pinpoint the most interesting and relevant tweets. Twitter can’t let the feed just pass the user by. Currently, the feed is organized around time—so if you’re not checking it frequently—you could miss something. Twitter needs to organize the content to make it more relevant to the user and give brands large, contextual environments to engage with users. If Twitter could pinpoint these water cooler moments and align brands, they’ll see leaps in advertiser interest and their bottom line.

—Trevor Guthrie, co-founder of Giant Spoon, a New York marketing firm

I would like to see Twitter make its service more essential to a broader public. Currently it’s too narrow and inside baseball with a small sliver of users making most of the content. Twitter can do this by improving its search or filters so consumers can better filter the hose of information.

If they broaden usage it will allow advertisers to scale the benefits that Twitter brings to marketing such as reaching people on the go. It will also make the innovative ad products from Twitter have a big enough impact to matter.

—Rishad Tobaccowala, chairman of Publicis Groupe SAPUB.FR +0.91% ‘s digital ad agencies Razorfish and DigitasLBI

Chobani

Chobani currently doesn’t buy ads on Twitter but we use the site to push out content and provoke a dialogue with consumers. Brands have to be careful with what they do on the platform because there is a trust there. If you are not careful and you push out overly commercial messages it could have a bad effect on your brand. I would like to see less intrusive advertising units that are more organic and relevant to the platform. I would buy those kinds of ads.

—Peter McGuinness, chief marketing officer of Greek-yogurt-maker Chobani Inc.

WPP

It would be helpful to understand what the usage dynamics of Twitter are: What are active and passive users and what are the demographics of those groups? Twitter is a cultural phenomena that deserves to be better understood.

When you think about a TV show, you get an audience and you get a profile of that audience. The same goes for when you buy ads in Vogue—you get the circulation and the profile of the readers.

—Rob Norman, global chief digital officer of GroupM, a media buying arm of WPPWPP.LN +1.48% PLC

Dentsu

Marketers want more ways to target Twitter users. Twitter currently offers enhanced targeting capabilities on its ad products, but not yet for non-promoted content. The ability to customize messages to consumers based on their location or interests would create a better experience for both marketers and the end user.

—Sarah Hofstetter, chief executive officer of 360i US, a digital ad firm owned by Denstu Inc.