Coca-Cola’s Promoted Tweet Nets 86 Million Impressions

Coca-Cola became the second company (following Disney/Pixar) to advertise as a Trending Topic on Twitter last week, garnering 86 million impressions and an engagement rate of 6% as a result.  Last Wednesday’s matches – which included the US and, separately, England – served as a proverbial double-edged sword for the brand; a peak time for Twitter activity, but a risk for interruptions in Twitter service. In this case, the risk paid off for Coke – particularly given that the Twitter buy, at an estimated tens of thousands of dollars, is still a much smaller expense than that of other typical Coke ad buys.

Coke’s Promoted Tweets were listed atop the Trending Topic search results for the sponsored #WC2010 Promoted Trend. The Tweet congratulated the England and US teams, linked to videos on YouTube and invited people to ’share their celebration’ of their teams’ success.

While this is promising news for Twitter’s revenue-generating ad platform – and for curious brands – another question this might raise is how Coke defined “engagement”. Is it a simple click-through from the Promoted Tweet to Coke’s website, or to linked videos? Or is it actual participation in ‘sharing their celebration’ by either commenting on a video, retweeting or other?

It will be of interest to note what objectives Coke and other participating brands establish for their Promoted Tweets – if it’s simply a cost-effective way to reach a highly-engaged audience, a way to associate the brand with particular trends or topics (i.e., the World Cup and celebrations), or to drive a sale. We feel the latter is a risky objective on a platform that is more about discussion and engagement than informing a purchase, and hope this doesn’t factor into brands’ immediate expectations or KPIs for their Promoted Tweets – it might polarize their customers.

Coca-Cola

[via Mashable]