WPP, the world’s largest advertising holding company, is doubling its commitment to Twitter this year. WPP CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, mentioned that his company will spend about $100 million in 2014, up from $50 million in 2013, during a conversation with Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, and President and CEO of Viacom, Philippe Dauman at Cannes Lions last Friday.
WPP and Twitter signed a deal last June that focused on using Twitter data and analytics to inform client strategy on the platform. During the Cannes chat, Sorrell mentioned that he doesn’t believe in making defined ad spend commitments, and instead wished to focus on using data to drive ad spend. GroupM and Kantar are among the WPP units involved in the Twitter partnership.
Costolo touched on Kantar’s roll in using data provided by Twitter to deliver a Twitter TV rating to the market. Similar to the rating Nielsen creates for Twitter, Kantar shows the number of people watching a show along with the number of people talking about and engaging with the show on Twitter. Giving media buyers a “360 degree view” of the show’s reach.
As Sorrell mentioned in the conversation, Twitter accounts for about 3 percent of advertising on mobile. WPP’s $50 million advertising spend on Twitter last year represents about 7.5 percent of Twitter’s reported earnings of $665 million in 2013.
Responding to an analysts question about whether Twitter is just a niche PR newswire service and will never be a mass market platform. Costolo, citing Ellen’s record-breaking Oscars selfie, said that in the 48 hours after the Oscars, there were over “3.3 billion views of tweets about the Oscars off and on our operated properties. So when you think about the total audience of Twitter, it’s massive…. When we talk about Twitter about total audience and total consumption it’s absolutely a mainstream service.”
Costolo called the Sponsored Tweet a “future proof” format because, as a native ad unit, a Sponsored Tweet can go everywhere regular tweets go as opposed to traditional ads that are walled off from the content.
Watch the discussion in full below.http://youtu.be/8GfSjdOcQVs
Hat tip: AllTwitter
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