14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter and TV are becoming even better friends and, for once, the admiration goes the other way around as Twitter aired its first TV commercial. It did it during the Pocono 400 Nascar race and it highlighted the tight partnership with Nascar, what else.
Twitter ran several short videos, seven in total, underlining the main reasons why you'd want to use Twitter and what you can expect to find there.
The videos were 15-second long and had simple and short taglines, things like "see what he sees" or "what they see is what you get," a hint perhaps to the nature of Twitter itself.
The ads directed viewers to an interesting new URL twitter.com/#NASCAR, which unfolds to twitter.com/hashtag/NASCAR and houses one of the new Twitter pages the company has been working on.
The page was dedicated to Nascar, obviously, and contained tweets from official sources and people on Twitter related to Nascar racing in some way or commenting on the event and the sport.
The Nascar Twitter page was similar to doing a #hastag search on the site, but the tweets and the sources were curated so only the interesting ones, from people you may actually want to listen to, made it through.
Twitter has been working with Nascar for quite some time, culminating in the TV ads and the event coverage. But Twitter has much bigger plans, if anything, this was a proof-of-concept showing what can be done.
The ads were not so much aimed at the viewers as at other advertisers. Twitter wants to present itself as a place with a lot of potential for this type of targeted marketing.
Big media events in particular can benefit from the type of coverage and curation. It's not uncommon and it's not a big surprise to anyone that people keep their phones or tablets close even when they watch TV. The second screen is already a reality, advertisers just have to realize it and figure out how to use it.
