We’re not going to name names. Okay, we’re going to name one but it’s ancillary to the discussion – Twitter.
Recently, Twitter started to publicly show view counts on each tweet. It’s nothing revolutionary given that video sites have been doing the same since day one. However, an embarrassing thing happened. The tide went out and the nude swimmers were there for all to see.
Some prominent accounts with tens of thousands – or millions – of followers appear to generate view counts orders of magnitudes lower than their follower figures would have you expect. This is where we don’t name names.
You can see for yourself by looking up trade journals and comparing performance with alleged reach.
There’s a social listening platform that’s been a mainstay in medical Twitter for a few years that had been showing ‘impressions’ counts to Twitter users by multiplying the number of tweets by an account’s follower count. Given recent developments it seems appropriate to suppose that the service’s methodology has led to massive impression inflation. But again, not naming names.
This leads us to metrics. In marketing impressions are cheap. Your ad is ‘seen’ but did it do anything? Was an action prompted? Or did it simply satisfy a KPI? Don’t be fooled by metrics that sound large. Instead, pay for actions. Clicks, opens, views, listens. Put your brand’s budget to work instead of just standing around hoping someone looks their way.
Evan Johnson
Chief Operating Officer, Watzan