Twitter Rolls Out Expanded Brand Pages for More Companies

Twitter has started rolling out its enhanced brand pages to more advertisers.
The social networking site — which announced in December that it would be introducing Facebook-style brand pages for companies to customize and highlight content — has extended the platform to National Public Radio, NBC News, Volkswagen, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Anobii and others, the company told Mashable.

“Enhanced profile pages will continue to roll out to advertising partners, as well as other select partners, charities, media organizations and individuals,” Twitter said in a statement.
The latest brands are the first to get the design since it was made available to certain partners when it launched. Included among the first 21 brands invited to test out the new platform were HP, Intel, Coca Cola, Dell, Disney, JetBlue, Nike and Paramount Pictures.
Although brands with enhanced profile pages will have access to uploading banners and promoting tweets at the top of their Twitter timeline, it’s up to account owners to use and make the most of the functionality.
Some companies are already making the most of their brand pages. In fact, launch partners HP and Intel hosted the first-ever live stream of a concert on Twitter with electronic music master Tiësto during the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in January.
“HP came to us with the idea and we couldn’t be more excited to hear how the company and Intel will be using their Twitter brand pages to reach out to the public and become destination sites,” said Rob Pietsch, Twitter’s director of West Coast sales. “It’s a first for us, and we expect in the future that more companies will integrate streaming video into their pages.”
Twitter’s expanded brand pages are expected to change the way fans interact with businesses on the site.

MORE ROBUST TWITTER BRAND PAGES COMING TO BIG-SPENDING ADVERTISERs

Starting this week, Twitter is offering more robust brand pages to companies and partners that have committed to spending $25,000-plus on its ad products, such as promoted tweets and trends.

The messaging service unveiled its brand pages last month, launching with a group of 21 marketers including Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike and PepsiCo. Brand pages can be customized with large header images that advertisers can use to give greater visibility to their logo or other branded elements, which are often partially obscured by the timeline of tweets in the standard format. They can also be programmed to keep a particular tweet at the top of the timeline, which can auto-expand to reveal an embedded photo or video without the user taking action, and thus gives the page more visual impact.

“A tweet’s only 140 characters,” Twitter’s chief revenue officer, Adam Bain, said last month. “When consumers want to learn more, spend more time, or get deeper in terms of engagement, we think they’ll end up on the brand page.”

According to an email from a Twitter account executive obtained by Ad Age, the roll-out of brand pages to a larger group of brands and partners will begin on Feb. 1, and advertisers must have an active insertion order in Twitter’s system of $25,000 to qualify

The company’s launch group of 21 marketers was made up of its higher-spending media partners who had committed a minimum of $2 million to ad spending on the platform, according to an industry source who was informed by two Twitter sales representatives. A source at one of the launch brands confirmed that their company had made a year-long spending commitment on Twitter ad products of at least $2 million.

The company also announced last month that it was partnering with some charities and individuals for the launch of brand pages. One of them is the American Red Cross.

Twitter had no comment on either the release date of new brand pages or ad spending minimums required of brands to qualify for one.

Twitter’s global ad revenue was projected to reach $139.5 million last year and approach $400 million in 2013, according to eMarketer. It launched its advertising program in April 2010 with six brands signed up to use promoted tweets.

Original article in Advertising Age