Pepsi is the first brand to buy into the new content marketing strategy.
Things have been getting colorful in Twitter’s advertising department. Although the social media platform is known for microblogging, its latest ad dollar endeavors are focused on visuals.
The company began selling advertisers customizable emojis starting last year — whereas companies typically pay the Super Bowl millions to get a game-time ad, the Super Bowl paid Twitter $1 million for a game-time football emoji — and as of this month, it is selling advertisers custom promoted stickers. Yes, stickers. Or, rather… #Stickers.
Twitter rolled out unsponsored #Stickers onto the platform in June, and the new offering was monetized come August in an exclusive preliminary deal with Pepsi.
Pepsi has created a series of 50 custom stickers (on top of branded emoji) that consumers can add to their pictures, somewhat similar to the geotags on Snapchat. And according to Twitter’s blog, the #Stickers then “act as a visual hashtag, meaning that photos with your brand’s sticker will be connected and discoverable to anyone who taps your brand’s sticker. This allows a brand to see and engage with the people who are using their stickers in creative ways.”
While stickers might appear to be of the elementary school variety, they may provide some bountiful business opportunities. Twitter isn’t the first platform to add stickers to its repertoire, and other companies that have offered them to advertisers have made a profit.
For example, the Japanese chat app Line made $270 million last year from selling sponsored stickers alone.
A survey by RCB Capital Markets which found that 23% of Twitter advertisers planned to decrease their ad spending. Maybe stickers will inspire them to them stick around.
