Recently there has been a lot of buzz surrounding celebrities who are selling advertising space in their Twitter timelines. Statistics from Magpie – Twitter’s first advertising network – reveal, however, that in-stream advertising from “John Doe” is considerably more favored by recipients than an ad published amid tweets by Dr. Drew, Kim Kardashian or other celebrities.
"Our network has always been open to everyone – we don’t purchase celebrities"
Magpie asserts that the smaller communities on Twitter have much closer and more genuine personal connections than those of celebrities. Accordingly, they are inclined to listen to their friends significantly more carefully. A sponsored message in such an environment therefore generally receives much higher click-throughs. "Getting advertising right means being relevant and informative. It does not mean plain sales-pitches"
The Magpie network is alone among its rivals to provide fine-grained targeting mechanisms that essentially operate in a similar way to Google AdWords. Rather than simply selecting from a list of celebrities, advertisers can define their target profile using keywords and other relevant criteria. Magpie then selects matching Twitter users and engages them to spread the word.
As a member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), a self-regulating trade association devoted to ethical and socially respected word of mouth marketing, Magpie gives both advertisers and Twitter users 100% control over displayed ads. It was also the first Twitter ad network to introduce full disclosure. "On Twitter, a brand's reputation can be easily jeopardized when this is done wrong", contends Ruf. "Less experienced advertising companies on Twitter often don't have the know-how that we've built up". This is a fact that corporations such as Heineken, Vodafone, Tetrapak, Deutsche Post, Cadbury Wispa and Microsoft Xbox value and therefore place their trust in Magpie for their Twitter advertising.
