Twitter advertising campaign costs

Leaked Email from Twitter reveal costs per follower

Value/Importance: [rating=3]

Recommended link: Original post on the Drum

Our commentary on the costs of Twitter advertising

These are the costs revealed in the leaked email from Twitter’s ad sales department:

• Cost of $2.50 and $4 per follower
• $0.75 to $2.50 for each click, favourite, retweet or reply.
• Commitment to a minimum campaign spend of 3 months and $15,000

Since Twitter introduced it’s advertising through it’s Promoted Tweets we’ve had questions from marketers about costs and whether the service would become available to advertisers with smaller budgets as is possible through Adwords, Facebook and LinkedIn.

This leak gives an idea of the costs and suggests the programme isn’t likely to become available to small and medium businesses any time soon.

Marketing implications of the Twitter fees

While most marketers will continue to use Twitter as a low-cost way of engaging and building an audience, it’s useful to know that advertising isn’t an option - if and when colleagues ask “why aren’t we advertising on Twitter?”

If you work for a larger organisation or agency with larger budgets available for this programme this raises questions about the value of a follower compared to other channels. While the cost appears expensive at first glance, it may not be in comparison to other channels like Adwords where someone who clicks on an ad is arguably less engaged. It will be interesting to see ideas and cases on calculating the value of a follower in the same way email marketers assess value per subscriber.