How is the MENA region faring in terms of Twitter penetration?

MENA is the fastest growing market in the world when it comes to Twitter penetration, as we have 300 percent year-on-year growth within the region.

The UAE, KSA and Egypt have some of the highest numbers in Twitter penetration and active users, with 60 percent of MENA users accessing the social network via mobile.

Are brands engaging in Twitter advertising?

It is very new in the region, having started in January 2013. We’re still in the education phase, where we tell brands what opportunities they have on the platform. However, brands at the moment are tentatively starting to redirect their advertising spend to online, so we are seeing that shift towards digital. Now that Twitter is becoming more included in digital budgets, we are seeing a momentum from brands advertising on Twitter, but we are still in the early adoption stage.

How are you educating brands to advertise more on Twitter?

We met with Fortune 500 companies to explain the opportunities available on the platform in terms of advertising and building a community, by promoting trends and tweets. Through the various options, they can target specific segments of people based on what they want to advertise.

What mistakes are brands making online?

The biggest thing that companies need to keep in mind is that Twitter is a mobile-first platform, meaning that more people are looking at Twitter on their mobiles. Ensuring that all the links are mobile-friendly, and the tweets are short and unique, is key to attracting users.

How does the Twitter ad model work?

There are three Promoted Products available on the Twitter platform: Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends.

Promoted Accounts are the best way to build a community of active and engaged followers and advocates. Through the various targeting options, you can segment specific markets to ensure that you are targeting the right audience for your brand. Promoted Tweets allow you to send your message faster and further, by placing your tweets in the Twitter streams of specific users.

Finally, Promoted Trends allows a brand or company to own the top trending topic on the platform for 24 hours within a particular country, to generate mass awareness around any special launches, big events or important announcements.

What are the best practices when it comes to Twitter advertising?

Twitter and TV have proven to be a very powerful advertising combination. Ninety five percent of all discussions around TV occur on Twitter and by integrating these two platforms, you are capitalizing and leveraging off an enormous amount of exposure. Sixty percent of MENA residents use Twitter while watching TV at home. This two-screen experience allows them to engage with and prolong the discussion regarding a particular program or commercial. By including a hashtag [#] or an “@” handle on the screen, you are inviting people to enrich their viewing experience online.

Are MENA users engaging with ads on Twitter?

MENA users are definitely engaging with ads on Twitter, there is a much higher engagement rate with Promoted Tweets than with organic tweets. From our various studies, we’ve estimate engagement for organic tweets is 0.07 percent, while the regional benchmark for Promoted Tweets is between one and three percent.

Is video advertising growing on Twitter?

Absolutely; Vine Videos are also growing in this region (these are six-second, in-stream videos). Twitter is, most importantly, a traffic driver, it drives more viewers to YouTube than YouTube does itself. Therefore, Twitter and video advertising work really well together

How can Twitter protect brands’ Promoted Tweets from being bought by someone else?

We have a minimum investment spend for brands in the region to buy a Promoted Tweet. This initial financial hurdle is in place to make sure that the platform is used by premium brands. It is unlikely that we’ll have individuals advertising in this space.

We also have a responsibility to protect our users from spam, so that not every single nail salon around the corner is cluttering their Twitter feed.

How is ad effectiveness measured on Twitter?

When brands advertise with us they get access to a dashboard, which shows real-time analytics and data. We measure effectiveness through engagement and followers, which includes clicks, retweets, replies and favorites, as well as what people are doing with a tweet when they see it. We also analyze the number of followers you get as a measure for effectiveness.

Brands get access to all of this data and can optimize their campaigns in real-time, and edit anything they want in order to achieve their KPIs on the platform.