Twitter organises #WhatsHappening2022 event

Twitter recently organised an event #WhatsHappening2022, in which some of its leaders in India and APAC - Preetha Athrey, Kanika Mittal, Dipti Rao Dhar, Rishabh Sharma, Krishna Iyer, Amrita Tripathi, Shirish Andhare, and Apurva Dalal, along with Twitter’s Chief Customer Officer, Sarah Personette, laid out some of the latest innovations, products, and content at the platform.

The leaders also outlined how the platform is laser-focused on promoting healthy conversations on the service. 

The topics discussed at the event ranged from brand safety, consumer innovation and audience, to sports and other issues.

Some of the key topics discussed as per the platform were: 

It starts with a safer Twitter: Ensuring brand safety 

Twitter, while being committed to building and maintaining a safe and healthy service, also strives to ensure equal participation. Providing a safe and healthy service to everyone is the service’s priority, said Sarah Personette, Chief Customers Officer, Twitter. Ensuring a safer Twitter for all requires proactive, people-based thinking with policies that lead, products that protect, and partnerships that drive industry-wide change to make Twitter a safer place for both people and brands.

Consumer innovation and audience  

Twitter is the world’s largest forum of public human thought. Preetha Athey, Director - Global Business Marketing, Twitter APAC, outlined how the public conversation on Twitter has evolved over the years, what people like to talk about, and how Twitter is innovating to create newer ways for people to come together through conversations. 

• 80% of the conversation is about people’s passions – such as gaming, lifestyle, music, movies, TV, or Sports. Over 64% of people in India are interested in technology, 63% in music, more than 57% in sports, and over 55% talk about food and drinks and news and politics represent only 20% of Tweet volume globally.
• To help people follow their interests more closely, Twitter had launched Topics in 2019 - a feature that uses machine learning to deliver subject and interest related Tweets to people’s timelines. Now, approximately 280 million accounts globally follow at least one Topic, with more than 14,500 Topics available across 11 languages.
• Twitter Spaces, introduced last year, are another way of having more nuanced, intimate conversations through the power of the human voice. With Spaces, we want to bring together the diverse audiences on our service – which, when speaking of India, transcend beyond interests to include diversity of geographies, cultures, and linguistic preferences. Twitter Spaces has opened up newer avenues for communities, brands and creators to stay connected, and that makes it an exciting space to watch out for. Adoption for Spaces in India has been great, especially for Tamil Spaces and we’ve seen an increase in the frequency, reach, creativity as well as conversations that bring the community together. 

Twitter for Brands: Launching and connecting with what’s happening

Twitter is where brands come to find, connect, and build relationships with consumers. Kanika Mittal, Lead, Large Client Solutions at Twitter India, put the spotlight on how Twitter has been partnering with brands and businesses across the spectrum to help them achieve their business goals, mainly, for two purposes: launch, and connect. 

• Globally, 91% of people want to see new brand launches on Twitter and brands that launch on Twitter are over twice as likely to meet their launch KPIs. Twitter offers a range of products within its Takeover offerings including the Trend Takeover, Trend Takeover (Promoted Trend Spotlight), which let brands acquire the premium real estate on Twitter, helping them grab attention and scale reach when launching something new. 
• Connecting with consumers is equally important to nurture, grow and retain a loyal base of a brand’s most important users and become part of the larger social conversation. Twitter’s unique position as the real-time, conversational layer of the internet, makes it the best place to build relevance by being part of the conversation.
• Moreover, Twitter’s packed range of ad products also helps brands achieve full-funnel impact. While Takeover products, Amplify Video solutions, and core branded features are great to drive awareness for our brand advertisers, we’re rapidly improving our lower funnel performance across Website and Mobile App solutions to provide our customers the right solutions to drive buying behaviour.

The Emerging India story: Twitter for small-medium businesses

From freshly funded start-ups to computing, from blockchain to fintech, well known personalities to upcoming influencers, the SBM landscape on Twitter is vibrant, and getting brighter by the day. Dipti Rao Dhar, Head of Customer Success (SMB), Twitter APAC, explained why SMBs must lean into Twitter’s power: 

• Twitter is the digital differentiator: As the ideal platform to launch something new, grow followers, engage with customers beyond customer support, and build brand personality by connecting with key moments that are trending in India, more and more SMB businesses are seeing the value and the opportunity in being present on Twitter.
• Creating value, driving results: SMBs are focussed on ROI, and they see value in their ad campaigns on Twitter. A recent example is for a performance campaign by Go Mechanic, a home-grown unicorn, that wanted to promote App Install campaigns, seeking to tap into Twitter’s influential and engaged audience. GoMechanic’s campaign leveraged creative strategies such as the use of influencers and video, as well as Twitter’s targeting capabilities, resulting in the most efficient CPCs for them across platforms.
• Going the extra mile: SMBs often have lean teams, and Twitter’s dedicated sales team for India supports a wide range of SMB businesses with everything -- from recommendations on campaign strategy, to operational support and optimisation. 
• Be part of conversations that matter: Twitter is a powerful space for several exciting, upcoming business verticals such as gaming, crypto and ed-tech. In fact, Twitter leads the way for conversations in this space, and provides an effective medium to reach interested audiences across these sectors. Furthemore, the discovery mindset of people on Twitter helps businesses connect with powerful and passionate audiences, make an impact, and drive results.

Global Twitter Next: Bringing human-centric ideas to life

Twitter’s brand strategy team, Global Twitter Next, is a team of strategists, technologists, and designers who help brands get the most out of Twitter to create ideas that are worth talking about. Rishabh Sharma, Head - Global Twitter Next, Twitter India, spoke about how Twitter has been leading the way with cross-industry creative partnerships with brands to make a positive impact through a deeper understanding of the service’s audience. 

• Leaning into the growing online shopping conversation -- of over 13 million Tweets in one year -- Twitter helped Flipkart (@flipkart) leverage the audience’s anticipation around its #BigBillionDays, inviting them to scroll through an interactive Twitter Moment and thus driving engagement, association, and impact. 
• Banking on the millions of Tweets around show releases, movies, and binge recommendations, Twitter Next partnered with Netflix India to bring alive the theme of Money Heist with an escape room for the fans to beat. The team also came together with Amazon Prime Video  (@PrimeVideoIN) to recreate the world of #TheWheelOfTime on Twitter, and launched a dynamic solution to  immerse Indian fantasy fans into this world by inviting them to experience the two opposing armies from the show and take a side.
• Twitter has also been working on innovations with financial services brands like the State Bank of India (@TheOfficialSBI) and the Association of Mutual Funds in India (@MFSahiHai), especially to help them connect with moments like Yoga Day,  to festivals like Diwali & Holi. 

Sharma also iterated that by meeting with creative partners, consulting brands, and collaborating for inspirational work, Twitter Next has significantly expanded its portfolio in India and is actively partnering with leading brands across technology, business, e-commerce, M&E, automobile, among others, and through 2022, the team’s focus is to grow its upstream partnership with both global and emerging brands in the country. 

Unveiling #OneTwitter: a 360-degree solutions partner

Twitter is more than just a service or platform for advertisers. It is a partner that helps brands, businesses, agencies, and all its partners across all sizes right from the creative thinking phase to the final execution stage. Krishna Iyer, Head - Channel Sales, Twitter India, shared that Twitter has now aligned its strengths into a bouquet of services for agencies & brands into #OneTwitter: a solutions partner to all of Twitter’s brands and agencies from the time an idea is rough and meandering, till it succeeds, sustains and wins the agency and brand what they set out to achieve. #OneTwitter will partner with brands & agencies across four pillars: Data, Creative & Strategy, API, and Servicing. 

Sports on Twitter: Partnerships, content, creators, and fans! 

Building intrigue into the charged-up cricket season that we’re standing face-to-face with, Amrita Tripathi, Head - Global Content Partnerships, Twitter India, outline how Twitter, and its audience’s deep-seeded passion for cricket, presents an opportunity for brands, broadcasters, publishers, and content creators to engage with audiences more meaningfully. 

• Since sports, especially cricket, is such a massive conversation on Twitter, publishers can bank on the momentum of conversations to engage leaned-in fans with premium video content including match highlights, in-match moments, off-ground exclusives, and a lot more. 
• Moreover, through Twitter’s Amplify Sponsorships, not only can publishers monetise their content by aligning 1:1 with the biggest brands in the country, but brands can also magnify the reach of their messages and campaigns by placing it next to brand-safe content from the most premium publishers.  

Amrita was also joined by two of the country’s most celebrated and revered cricket experts -- Harsha Bhogle and Gaurav Kapur -- who spoke about how the #CricketTwitter conversation has lifted fans’ viewing experience, how Twitter has paved the way for a grander celebration of the sport in the country, and the various ways that brands, broadcasters, and creators have been benefited by this conversation.  

Building for India: Twitter’s India Growth Story

Apurva Dalal, Director Of Engineering, Twitter India shared that almost 50% of Tweets in India are in languages other than English, and Shirish Andhare, Director of Product, Twitter India highlighted that the company continues to make rapid innovations in its language experience and infrastructure to deliver personalised experiences that will cater to the diversity of interests and culture that people in India bring with them.

• Twitter has strong aspirations for India and is ‘making India happen’ through a combination of global and India-first innovation. 
• Twitter is constantly piloting new features and learning from Indians’ experience on the service. The company has carved out a clear roadmap to achieve growth which aligns with its global goal of reaching 315 million mDAUs by Q4 2023. 

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