What you need to know
- Twitter has introduced "Branded Likes" to allow businesses to transform the Like button into custom artworks reflecting their brands.
- The new feature is an add-on to Twitter's existing Timeline Takeover service.
- Branded Likes will disappear after 24 hours.
Twitter has launched a new way for advertisers to drive brand engagement by turning the Like button into custom artwork. The aptly called "Branded Likes" will be visible to consumers in the United States, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.
Branded Likes are available as an add-on to Twitter’s Timeline Takeover offering. As a result, a brand's ad will show up first when you open Twitter for the first time on any given day.
Advertisers will be able to elect a hashtag to go with their Branded Likes, along with up to 10 translations of that hashtag. When a user taps the Like button, the custom animation shows up on any organic or promoted tweets containing the hashtags. It will appear in the same country as the brand's Takeover ad for up to 24 hours.
Twitter said in a blog post that it has worked with creative partners including Bare Tree Media in the U.S., U.K., and Saudi Arabia, as well as Carbon for Japan, to create the animations.
The social networking platform claims that two of three respondents to its survey find Branded Likes appealing. It also said Branded Likes had a positive impact during testing.
"During testing, Branded Likes generated positive impact when paired with Timeline Takeover, seeing a +277% lift in recall, and +202% lift in purchase and consideration intent," Twitter said.
The service didn't reveal how much the Timeline Takeover format costs. However, Social Media Today noted that Promoted Trends, which works in the same vein as Takeover ads, costs approximately $200,000 per day.
As a result, even if Branded Likes are only an add-on, they can be prohibitively expensive for most brands. However, as Twitter pointed out, it's ideal for "a movie or series premiere, a big conference, a new product release, or even a global sports event."
Android Central has contacted Twitter and will update this post once we receive a response.
Late last year, Twitter also experimented with an ad format that would insert contextual ads into your tweet conversations. The latest step might be less intrusive in terms of promoting brands to consumers.
