Celebs paid for plugged tweets
Those 140 characters on your Twitter page have the power of making money. Close on the heels of online marketing tools on other social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter too has a new marketing strategy for its advertisers where one can earn money while tweeting. UTV Interactive, digital arm of UTV has collaborated with IZEA, a leading international company in social media sponsorship to bring Sponsored Tweets, the advertising platform of Twitter, to India for the very first time. This means monetising celebrity Twitter accounts as well as regular users by allowing to place sponsored ads as tweets on the Twitter timeline. The trend has caught up worldwide with celebs like Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, and closer home celebrities like Lara Dutta, Mahesh Bhupathi, Anurag Kashyap endorsing paid tweets.
Sameer Pitalwalla, senior vice president, UTV Interactive believes that it is the beginning of individuals monetising their social media presence. “Twitter is amongst the top 10 most visited services in India and the platform of choice for celebrities to communicate with their fans. Internationally, due to their large base of followers, celebrities have begun to tweet out ads, as a way to monetise the service. Given that twitter and social media are such an important part of everyday life and culture, it was about time that those who are the largest, in terms of audience, on twitter, get around to monetising their presence,” he says.
It is being perceived as an influential marketing tool that we’ve seen in the recent times. Celebs can tweet what they feel like endorsing. Moreover, there are certain guidelines that are followed and there will be a difference between a sponsored tweet and normal content. Sameer says that they plan to target digital advertisers, both large and small, all which are potential clients.
The advertising rates are also transparent as they are clearly mentioned on the web portal.
Shruti Seth, singer and VJ says that she sees this as the next big step in advertising. “Social networking has become the latest mantra in today’s generation. It is the quickest and most effective way to be heard. I think advertisers obviously see it as a promising platform and using it to target the ultimate consumer is inevitable. Whether for better or worse, it is the next step in advertising. Like most of my peers I too see the reach it has and if that’s the way to go then I’ll be happy to go along with it,” she says.
Stand-up comedian and actor Cyrus Sahukar believes that it is a non-intrusive way of advertising without any fuss and hype. “It’s not in your face kinds and gives you your space. If you don’t like it, you have the option of not endorsing it,” he adds.
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