Twitter ad campaign objectives are pretty straightforward: You can drive traffic to your site, grow your following, increase engagement or promote an app. But what if you’re running a branding campaign? Which campaign type should you use to maximize impressions? Twitter says its Tweet engagement objective should be used to build business awareness, but we weren’t so sure. Ever the skeptic, we decided to test it. The results surprised even us.
We did a quick and dirty case study testing campaign objectives to see if following Twitter’s guidance pays off. We picked the two relevant objectives: Tweet engagements and Website clicks or conversions.
[Side Note] We know some marketers may not see selecting the objective as targeting. But shouldn’t we? It’s the foundation for everything else. What if your audience isn’t typical and doesn’t respond to Twitter’s algorithm as predicted? In any case, onto the juicy stuff.
Test parameters
The tests were small with small budgets: Only ten dollars per campaign, per day, for three days (for a total budget of $30 per campaign. #math). Each ad had its own campaign to prevent contamination by other ads. We promoted 5 tweets over 3 weeks. Each tweet promoted an AIMCLEAR blog post and linked to our website. We used the exact same campaign targeting for both objectives. (We built one, copied it and changed the objective to prevent human error. Plus, use your tools right? 🙂 )
The results
In our test, the Website clicks or conversion campaigns raked in nearly 6 times the impressions of our Tweet engagements campaigns. Cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is untouchably in favor of the Website clicks and conversions campaign, at $1.69 compared to $9.95. We suspect the impression glut is due to Twitter having to show the ads to more people to drive the clicks needed to get paid.
So there you have it. Twitter says use the engagements objective to build awareness, but we found clicks or conversions delivers many more impressions at a much lower CPM. Does this mean you should absolutely use Website clicks for branding campaigns? Not at all. Remember, you should always be testing and the conclusion shouldn’t be generalized to other verticals or audience segments. Find what works for you, and feel free to share your results in the comments!
