Online shopping conversations growing on Twitter | Economic Times

Online shopping conversations are growing on microblogging platform Twitter in India, and more brands and companies are expanding their presence on the service through advertising or creating new accounts or campaigns to drive engagement with end users, said Kanika Mittal, business head at Twitter India in an interview to ET. “We are seeing traction across categories. For example, if you look at tech-OEM, we have the largest brands such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo engaging with us for multiple launches besides using the platform for contextualizing key cultural moments,” she said. “OTT players such as Disney+ Hotstar to Amazon Prime and Netflix are using the platform for a variety of show launches. Players in edutech are coming on to the platform. New age companies such as boAt are using the platform to reach out to the relevant audience,” she added. Mittal said twitter recently did a deep dive study to understand the shopping narrative for Twitter in India and came out with the #ConverseToConvert report which showed that 14 million conversations around online shopping were generated on Twitter between June 1 last year to June 30 this year, recording a 260% year on year growth. “With the pandemic there has been a shift in the way people consume digital content. The second contributor was Twitter’s rebranded advertising suite. We have made it simpler for advertisers to come onto the platform and develop a full funnel approach to their campaigns that can eventually allow for actions like conversions,” she said. Twitter revamped its advertising products suite in April this year and from over 22 ad formats, it has narrowed down the options to five categories such as promoted ads, followers ads, Twitter Takeover, Twitter Amplify, and Twitter Live. “We have the biggest players in the country like Flipkart, Amazon and Myntra doing some innovative work in the online shopping space on the platform. Brands are using Twitter amplify as a way of amplifying video on the platform. Advertisers can align their ads with premium video content from India's most relevant publishers that Twitter has a tie up with,” said Mittal. “Twitter Takeover is our most premium product that allows brands to do a mass reach on the platform by taking over both the Twitter timeline as well as the explore tab. Twitter Live is being used by sectors such as auto in particular,” she added. Mittal said in the tech B2B space, brands such as Microsoft are using the platform for creation of content and aligning content to target the right audience. “For example for interesting pieces like artificial intelligence or data security, which are top of mind for Microsoft, they use Twitter to amplify it to the relevant audience,” she said. She said festivals are a massive conversation driver on Twitter. "They are certainly a very attractive trigger for brands and advertisers to come in and do the right kind of engagement,” she added.