Twitter has officially launched their latest attempt at driving up their ad revenue. “Promoted Stickers” allow advertisers to create stickers that people can then add to their photos or other content. Twitter has allowed stickers since June, but now they are offering the option to make them into ads as well, which is an interesting little twist.
Major companies have long been trying to find ways to blend real content with advertisements (think of Facebook’s News Feed, which now contains plenty of ads). Stickers (the physical, sticky type) have long been used for marketing. Just think of how many people take their Apple sticker and put it on the back of a laptop, or even on their vehicle. This is great advertising, and is very inexpensive.
Currently only a few select brands can use these promoted stickers, and they must be negotiated through their Twitter sales rep. So far there is no word on how much these Promoted Stickers cost, or even how brands will be charged.
It may be that the brands are charged only when someone chooses to use one of these stickers, or it could be every time someone views a sticker.
Undoubtedly this will be announced before the stickers are rolled out to a larger audience.
Pepsi has jumped on to this new idea and created the first campaign using these Promoted Stickers. They have a total of fewer than 50 stickers that they have added into sticker libraries in countries including Argentina, Egypt, Canada, India, Mexico, Russia, Spain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.
It will be interesting to see how this initial campaign goes. Until then, we’ll just have to wait and see how Twitter decides to roll this feature out to additional marketers.
