Twitter debuts Conversational Ads format to spur brand engagement

Dive Brief:

Since coming on board in October, Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey has been pushing out improvements to the micro-blogging site to lure more advertisers and grow its user base. Conversational Ads is the latest ad format improvement.
The new ads are similar to Promoted Tweets, but include call-to-action buttons and customizable hashtags to encourage user engagement with brand tweets.
Users who engage with the ads also receive a "thank you" message from the brand in the form of a tweet in the user’s timeline, giving marketers additional earned media.

Dive Insight:

With it's new ad product, Conversational Ads, Twitter hopes to get users to talk about brands more.

The new format makes it "even easier for consumers to engage with and then spread a brand’s campaign message," Twitter Revenue Product Manager Andrew Bragdon wrote in a blog post about the new ad product. "It’s a powerful way for advertisers to extend their presence across Twitter."

Conversational Ads seems to be designed to be something like Promoted Tweets on steroids with the call-to-action button, customizable hashtags and ready-to-go brand message that makes it easy for users to share. Adding to the earned media reach of the ad, any user who engages with the format receives a thank you tweet that appears in their timeline.

Beta partner Mark Childs, CMO of Samsung Electronics Canada, said in a Twitter blog post, “As one of the first global brands to use Twitter’s new conversational ad unit, we’re excited by the opportunity to initiate more meaningful conversation. To stay ahead of the curve, it’s important to continuously evolve our social media engagement strategies to help our fans get closer to the Samsung Canada brand.”

Right now the Conversational Ads format is only available in beta for select advertisers in all markets according to Twitter. VentureBeat believes that because the new ad product is focused on engagement, the pricing will likely be that of "objective-based campaigns," making the fees similar to those of Promoted Tweets containing images.

In separate Twitter news, after reports swirled that the site was considering expanding its 140-character limit to 10,000, core users took to the platform to voice their concern. So much was the upheaval that CEO Dorsey took to Twitter himself to assure users that a character limit change wouldn't make a fundamental change to Twitter, though he never confirmed or denied that such an update was coming.