Twitter rolls out ad products to Southeast Asia

Its advertising tools—promoted tweets, promoted accounts and promoted trends—will now be available in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

The tools were previously only available in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Latin America.

Advertisers to-date could target global campaigns to reach consumers in Southeast Asia, but this marks the first opportunity for local advertisers to launch local campaigns, according to the company.

Rather than enter the market directly, Twitter has inked an exclusive partnership with Komli Media to enable the expansion of its promoted products across the region.

Komli Media will manage all Southeast Asia sales and help develop the regional market for Twitter and its promoted products through education and training programs for agencies and large advertisers.

Ali Jafari, director, sales operations, Twitter, said the partnership approach is a “much more efficient and scalable” way to enter the market.

“We really view them [Komli Media] as an extension of our own sales team, so they will be getting the same training as our sales team, they will have access to the same tools and metrics,” he said. “We think that’s the healthiest way to enter the market.”

Twitter said globally it has 140 million monthly active unique users, with 70 per cent of usage coming from outside the United States. Southeast Asia is one its fastest-growing markets.

Matt Sutton, general manager of Komli Engage, said Twitter’s entrance is a major opportunity for advertisers in the region, adding that he expects “extremely strong” uptake.

“Most of the brands have got a Twitter account and they are engaging with people...but they don’t have a Twitter-dedicated strategy yet,” he said. “They probably hadn’t quite figured how should they be engaging with users specifically on Twitter and then obviously they haven’t had the opportunity to leverage the ad platforms on top of that to amplify and extend that message.”

Jafari agreed that the appetite is strong among brands and agencies in the region, but added that he does not have a point of view on which markets will see the strongest demand. “It is something that we will collectively figure out with Komli as we launch and as we begin to work with advertisers and agencies in these regions,” he said.

Jafari added that the key element of Twitter as an ad platform is that its promoted products “look the same and feel the same” as its organic products.

“The engagement rates that we see on promoted tweets—engagement being defined as any sort of interaction with the tweet—are 1 to 3 per cent globally,” he said. “When you compare that to traditional display advertising that is in the 0.05 to 0.1 per cent range, it suggests the advertising really resonates with the users. Part of the reason for that is that the content is the advertising on Twitter.”