How Well Are Sponsored Trends Doing? How To Track Them

Twitter has actively promoted its advertising services and online products to businesses and individuals alike, even monetizing on sponsored trends to help brands get top-line timeline attention at all relevant markets. In 2012, the US presidential race showed how sponsored trends may be instrumental toward capturing a larger share of the voting market, if not determine how online are responding to certain campaign activities. Back then, sponsored trends cost around $150,000 per day. Now, as the activity gets more attention and has proven its effectiveness, the micro-blogging giant decided to up its price tag to $200,000 per day. It is important to note that when sponsored trends were first introduced, they were priced at $80,000 a day. Promoted trends work by allowing advertisers to place their own message above the "trends" list on the left side of the Twitter home page, as well as related apps. The reason why it costs so much is because millions of users will most likely see the message or display for an entire day, thereby increasing the probability of a shift or conversion in preferences. Some of the major companies that have featured promoted trends are Samsung and HBO. On Twitter today, #iHeartTheWanted was launched as a promoted tweet to help generate buzz for boy group The Wanted, or the British counterpart of the US pop group One Direction. The promoted trend got the attention it wanted, all right, garnering some 1,067 tweets at its highest in an hour. However, some Twitter users, clearly not fans of the group, scoffed at the attempt. If the promoters of the trend, HP and iHeartRadio were only after the numbers, then they certainly achieved their objective. Another promoted trend, #BellLetsTalk, was on Twitter today, and certainly showed that serious online discussion can trump fangirl/fanboy activity with some 147,800 tweets per hour at its peak. #BellLetsTalk was created to discuss the challenges that people with mental problems go through each day, as well as the people who live with them. Got a hashtag in mind? You can find out how many tweets and impressions it's getting and who's talking about it at any given time. Do you think promoted trends are effective? Tell us in the comments!