Twitter users in India may soon start seeing more targeted advertising as the micro-blogging service is looking to rev up its advertising business in the country.
The company, which hired Rishi Jaitley last November to lead the effort in setting up an Indian base, has chosen digital media platform Komli Media to be its ad sales partner in India.
According to people with direct knowledge of the matter, Komli Media will start selling ‘promoted products’ or advertising on Twitter in India.
Twitter is looking to tap into newer revenues streams to reach its global sales target of $1 billion by 2014, and it is expected that emerging markets will play a role in achieving this.
“Komli’s offering at the moment will include promoted tweets, promoted trends and promoted accounts,” said a Twitter spokesperson, who confirmed the development. Komli, interestingly, also has the mandate for selling premium advertising for Facebook and Zynga in India.
The Indian online advertising market, which is currently dominated by Google’s AdWords, Facebook and a few other minor players, is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 32 per cent to Rs. 7,400 crore in 2017, according to a recent FICCI study.
Pricing structure
Although Twitter refused to comment on rate cards or the current pricing structure, industry insiders put the minimum outlay at around Rs. 5 lakh to Rs. 8 lakh.
Promoted trends, for instance, will last 24 hours, and appear the top of trending topics. Twitter and Komli Media are pitching this as an option to be used for companies that have big launches and announcements to make.
Promoted accounts, on the other hand, which will appear at the top of ‘who to follow’ recommendations, and will mostly be available on a cost-per-follow model.
Twitter has earlier worked with Star TV and UTV in India, where they promoted hashtags on the channels.
The company is also looking to sign more partnerships with various channels, operators and network operators.
