TV ties may illuminate Kirstine Stewart’s new Twitter gig
Twitter announced Thursday a new ad product that aims to tie marketers’ TV ad buys to their spend on the social network. The product, TV ad targeting on Twitter, is now in beta testing in the U.S. with Twitter clients running national TV campaigns.
Designed for marketers chasing the holy grail of the integrated campaign, TV ad targeting on Twitter offers clients a “TV Ads dashboard” that shows when their ads run on TV so they can coordinate promoted tweets and offer more cohesion with multi-screen calls to action.
According to Michael Fleischman, a revenue product manager at Twitter, the dashboard uses “video fingerprinting technology” to detect when and where brand’s ads are running on television. The product follows a string of moves towards the TV and second screen ad market from Twitter, including the announcement of the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating – which tracks how popular TV shows are on Twitter – in December 2012.
Twitter’s chief revenue officer Adam Bain explained the company’s TV strategy at an Adobe event earlier this year, stating, “We think the market is going to a more holistic model of attribution that involves TV, digital, mobile, Twitter, etc. so you can get a better picture of what the consumer is interested in and passionate about, which ultimately leads to a purchase.”
The product was developed in part by Bluefin Labs, a company Twitter acquired earlier this year for a reported $100,000 million. Though the company has not announced when the product will be available in Canada, its release provides some insight into the announcement late last month of former executive vice-president of English Services at CBC/Radio-Canada, Kirstine Stewart, as the managing director and first hire of Twitter Canada.
If the social network’s new office looks to target Canadian advertisers wanting to pair social media initiatives with television campaigns, Stewart’s ties to the television industry in Canada – at both CBC and Alliance Atlantis, where she was senior vice president of programming – may prove valuable.
On Thursday Twitter also announced a second enhanced offering for advertisers, called a “Lead Generation Card,” which allows marketers to collect basic consumer information like email, name and Twitter handle.
