Promoted Trends are premium ad space from Twitter and one of its biggest sources of income. Reportedly costing $120,000 a day, its a premium slot, but it often ends up getting corrupted because of the organic nature of Twitter.
Discovery Channel recently bought time recently for Shark Week, yet it occurred when another tag #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend was trending leading to tweets like “She won’t shut up during #sharkweek!!! #Reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend.” Lexus CT Hybrid also had to hold down the slot on April 20 during Adolf Hitler’s birthday, the Columbine Massacre’s anniversary and marajuana celebrators (for 4/20).
“The very nature of social media is real-time conversation, said Lexus spokeswoman, Meg Seiler. We will continue to work with our partners on an ongoing basis to test, learn and develop best practices and guidelines in this space. That said, we also feel social-media users can distinguish between trending news topics and promoted topics. It’s not that much different than if we purchase an ad in a newspaper that is reporting about the day’s news, good and bad.”
Promoting on Facebook and Twitter is still seen as important despite the set backs because of the number of eyeballs it gets brands in front of. Twitter is looking to edit trending tweets to keep offensive content out of the top trending topics.
“As a brand steward for our clients, nasty and offensive organic trends don’t add to the appeal of the Promoted Trends product, but I am not sure if that would totally prohibit an ad buy, especially given the ephemeral nature of the trend list, said Candace Kuss London-based director of planning-interactive creative strategy. But if I was advising Twitter, I would be concerned. While personal users might prefer organic trends to freely reflect pure volume, professionally I think it would be good to see Twitter extend their ban of the obscene to include the dangerously offensive and to publish a clear guide to their curation principles.”
Questions still remain over how Twitter will differentiate the meaningfully obscene from the pointlessly offensive. “It’s a tough call,” said David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation. “But there should be some moderation. You want the platform to remain in the hands of the people. There are people who use Twitter in great, great ways but there are also a lot of jerks out there.”
Twitter is a great instant reflection of our popular culture, but that isn’t always pretty, and it leaves sponsors in bad spots sometimes.
Source: Ad Age
