Digital media and technology solutions provider Connect Ads and Twitter Inc announced on Sunday the official launch of Twitter's advertising services in the MENA region, where Connect Ads will act as Twitter's official partner. Connect Ads is a pioneering Digital Advertising Solutions Provider in the MENA region and a subsidiary of OTVentures, a leading digital and technology solutions provider for both online and mobile platforms and an affiliate of Orascom Telecom, Media & Technology (OTMT.CA) Both companies will work to promote Twitter's suite of advertising and sales products at a time when analysts talk of the social media company's anticipated 2014 IPO. Earlier this month The Guardian reported that Greencrest, a financial analyst firm specializing in pre-public companies, estimated Twitter's worth at $11bn. The messaging platform saw sustained growth in 2012 reaching a current base of 200 million users and 400 million tweets per day. In the MENA region Twitter's users tripled during that period. The micro-blogging site offers Arabic speakers the opportunity to tweet in their own language and has gained some high-profile users over the past few years, including rulers, senior government officials, sportsmen, poets, writers, academics and celebrities. "Twitter is a key player in social media and [now] advertisers [will have] the opportunity to associate their message with [that brand]," said Mohamed El Mehairy, managing director, Connect Ads. Connected Ads will help Twitter deliver three principle services that are together referred to as Promoted Products. The first, Promoted Tweets, allows the promotion of tweets and stacks the promoted item at the top of the timeline. The tweet only appears to a user if Twitter's algorithms deem it relevant. With Promoted Trends a brand can message every user that logs into Twitter in a certain geographical region within a 24-hour period. Use of the service places the customer message at the top of Twitter's Trending Topics list for 24 hours. When a user clicks on the Promoted Trend they are taken to a search result page where a Promoted Tweet from the customer ranks top and the other results are contents that includes the Promoted Trend hash tag. Promoted Accounts is a way to message to Twitter users that a particular brand has an account on Twitter and is designed to help with the growth of followers. "[Our partnership with] Connect Ads, which has tremendous regional expertise and also has a strong understanding of the digital advertising space, we believe will give us a great start in the region and grow our businesses quickly," said Shailesh Rao, vice president, International Operations, Twitter. Rao said Twitter would only charge the advertiser when users engaged with the products but for Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts he added that these were sold on a bidded-auction basis and that Promoted Trends would be sold on a fixed-price basis. Twitter believes the uniqueness of the engagement process is the main selling point for its services as advertisers start to recognize the growing relevance of the digital platform within the media sector. "Twitter allows people to connect with their interests; to connect to the people they care about and the topics they care about," said Rao. "When that happens successfully it creates an opportunity for brands to participate in those conversations. We believe with the launch of our promoted products here in the Middle East that for the first time it will empower brands and agencies to participate in these conversations with a large and growing audience here in [the region]. Rao argued that since the method used by Twitter to promote brands, involved conversations rather than static images and text or a video that was gone in a matter of minutes, the reach of the methodology was that much greater than traditional methods of advertising. He claimed that the engagement rate (a demonstrable metric of consumer activity associated with a brand, be it in the form of clicks or other modes of communication) on such campaigns was 1% to 3%, placing it in the region of 10 to 30 times more effective than traditional advertising. Rao suggested many reasons for this including the natural feel of the conversational method of engagement and the fact that the explosion in the mobility sector allowed for countless more opportunities to reach an audience - from the morning commute to the moments before bedtime. While Greencrest's evaluation of $11bn is based on the relatively imprecise method of monitoring secondary-market trading, a funding round in 2011 valued Twitter at $8bn, after which the value rose to $10bn on secondary markets. After Facebook failed to make a splash with its public offering last year, Twitter's estimated value dropped to $9bn. Greencrest's January 2013 assessment reflects Twitter's perceived talent at monetising its platform. "The ability to allow a brand to match their product or promotional message with the right audience based on interest, we believe is very powerful, and unique to Twitter," Rao declared. About Connect Ads: Launched in 2002 with a handful of digital advertising specialists as an offshoot of LINKdotNET, the Egyptian leading Internet Service and Solutions Provider, Connect Ads today boasts more than 100 highly experienced professionals across the spectrum of the digital advertising world. Connect Ads currently owns several specialized regional operations, all working in the digital sphere. These include Search Worx, a performance based marketing agency specializing in SEM, SEO and PPC models amongst others and Tattlr, a social media arm offering platform building, presence engagement, and analytics services. Managing online advertising content non-exclusively for more than 100 international sites, Connect Ads has today become one of the regional leaders in digital advertising. The agency also represents some of the major worldwide networks, in addition to many other regional and local properties, on an exclusive basis. Connect Ads currently covers 13 markets through its seven regional offices, namely, Cairo, Egypt (HQ); Dubai, UAE; Jeddah and Riyadh, KSA; Casablanca, Morocco; Karachi, Pakistan; and Doha, Qatar.
