Twitter Amplify Promotes Brands Across Multiple Screens

Hot on the heels of the micro-blogging site’s most recent marketing tool, the lead generation card, Twitter has introduced another new feature to help brands advertise online: Twitter Amplify. Twitter Amplify takes advantage of the multi-screen viewing activity of many Twitter users by showing commercials before sporting clips posted in real-time during tournaments, games and events.

Real-time multi-screen promotional content has featured simultaneously on Twitter and television channels for some time, ever since it was revealed that, as Glenn Brown affirms in the announcement post on Twitter’s advertising blog, the “vast majority of the online public conversation around TV currently happens on Twitter – 95 per cent”. In fact, a number of studies have shed light on the correlation between television viewing figures and Twitter conversation, including one conducted by Nielsen earlier this year.

Brands have quickly realised that by coordinating their advertising across both television and social media channels, they make customer and fan engagement far more likely. Brands have identified that the least intrusive way to advertise across multiple screens is by promoting popular content:

ESPN and Ford Fusion led the way, bringing football fans Instant Replays in Tweets during every college football bowl game. During March Madness, Turner Sports, the NCAA, AT&T and Coke Zero followed suit, offering fans Real-Time Highlights of hoops action throughout the tournament. And now, during the home stretch through the 2013 Finals, the NBA is pushing the best Rapid Replays from TV, through a Tweet, to your mobile phone thanks to Sony Pictures, Sprint and Taco Bell. 

Sports fans often turn to Twitter to catch what they might have missed, or talk with other tweeters about what they are watching. Twitter Amplify helps brands become part of the experience, and perhaps even part of the conversation. The commercials are only ever a few seconds long, similar in length to a Vine in fact, but there is extra promotional content – banners, calls to action excetera – bordering the main video clip to ensure that the promotion’s message gets through.

Twitter has been testing Twitter Amplify with a number of its partners for a month or so, but primarily with sports broadcasters. Now, Twitter has partnered up with other broadcasting companies in an attempt to increase the scope of Twitter Amplify, such as BBC America, FOX, Fuse and The Weather Channel.

Twitter believes that the new partnerships will improve what is already a great feature:

We think these types of two-screen sponsorships are a win-win-win. Users receive spectacular, timely content that rounds out their TV experience or reminds them to tune in. Powered by Promoted Tweets, broadcasters reach new audiences and open up new business lines. Brand advertisers get, for the first time, an integrated cross-platform tool for reaching the social conversation wherever it happens. 

There is a full list of Amplify partners in the announcement post. If you want to partner up with Twitter and get a piece of the Amplify action, contact the company at amp@twitter.com.

Will Twitter Amplify make you engage with branded content more?

Google+ Unveils Redesign for Mobile Web

Less than a week after Google+ unveiled a redesign for desktop, the social network is also getting overhauled on the mobile web.

In a post on its official G+ page Tuesday, the service said that posts now appear as "cards" in the stream, making them easier to read, +1 and re-share.

What's more, Profiles and Pages now include cover photos and larger "tap targets," the blog post revealed.



Changes to the mobile version of Google+ are similar to those made for the desktop. At its Google I/O conference for developers, the search giant rolled out an image-centric design that resembles Pinterest's and Facebook's layouts. Google introduced 41 new features, including a multi-column layout, larger photos and automatic addition of related hashtags to the stream.

There are now 190 million active users in the Google+ stream.

What do you think of Google+'s updates for the mobile web? Tell us in the comments, below.

Images courtesy of Google+; homepage image via iStockphoto, maxphotography

Pinterest Adds More Info To Pins And “Pin It” Button To Certain Apps

Pinterest has partnered with a number of brands to add more information to certain pins. Product, movie and recipe pins pinned from certain sites will display more information about their subjects to save users having to search off-site for it. Also, certain apps now have a “Pin It” button to make pinning on mobile devices easier.

These new, more informative pins are called “rich pins”. Any brand can apply to make all their future pins into rich pins on the Pinterest for business site. However, Pinterest advises brands who want to add rich pins to “prep [their] website with meta tags” and “test out [their] rich pins” before applying “to get them on Pinterest.”

Product pins from retail partners display pricing, availability and location information. Recipe pins from chosen pinners display ingredients, cooking time and serving suggestions. Movie pins from Flixster, Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes contain ratings, reviews and a cast list.

Rich pins are identifiable in the stream thanks to the source logo at the bottom left of the pin and, in some cases, a preview of some of the extra information they contain. The logo must belong to one of Pinterest’s partners. Software Engineer Anna Majkowska lists all the partners in the announcement post on the Pinterest blog:

For clothes, furniture, gifts and products:
Anthropologie, Asos, BHLDN, eBay, Etsy, Free People, Home Depot, Modcloth, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Overstock, REI, Sephora, Shopify shops, Shop Terrain, Sony, Target,Urban Outfitters, Walmart, Wayfair, Zulily 

 
For mouth-watering recipes:
101 Cookbooks, Better Homes and Gardens, Bon Appetit, Chobani, Country Living, Delish,Epicurious, Good Housekeeping, Leite’s Culinaria, Martha Stewart Living, MyRecipes,Naturally Ella, Nestlé Very Best Baking, Real Simple, Simply Recipes, Skinny Taste, The Girl Who Ate Everything, The Kitchn,What’s Gaby Cooking, Whole Foods Market, Woman’s Day

All the information displayed in rich pins is updated automatically on Pinterest when updated on the parent site. “Right now,” says Pinterest, “there are three types of rich pins: movie, recipe and product”, suggesting that Pinterest intend to introduce new types of rich pins in the future. In the announcement post, in fact, Majkowska asks users to suggest which pin category should be improved next. 

To make pinning easier on mobile devices, certain apps now have a “Pin It” button alongside other share widgets. Users can pin directly from the following sites using the new Pin It button:

Behance, Brit+Co, Etsy, Fotopedia, Jetsetter, Modcloth, Snapguide, TED, The North Face, and Zulily The new “rich pins” feature is one of a number of updates that Pinterest has made in the last week, first adding notifications and mentions to the app and then allowing users to send pins on-site, as they continue to improve the site’s and app’s appearance and functionality.

What do you think of rich pins?