New Twitter ads let brands bait fans into tweeting

Twitter is giving advertisers a new way to bait users into spreading their message.

The social network released a type of ad on Thursday that unlocks pieces of exclusive brand content -- such as movie trailers, recipes or interviews -- when replied to or retweeted.

The feature is built on Twitter's "conversational ads" -- promoted tweets with attached lists of prefabricated responses and hashtags that users can post with a simple click -- which were introduced to select brands for a trial run earlier this year.

The company is now officially debuting the format to all advertisers following the success of the brands who participated in the testing phase, according to Thursday's announcement.

Twitter claims the retweets and responses of people interacting with the conversational posts have netted an average of 34 views for every 100 of the actual ad -- what it calls an earned media rate of 34 percent.

Coca-Cola, Marvel, AMC and Unilever-owned Axe body spray were among the brands with early access to the features.

AMC used the opportunity to hype its series The Walking Dead during San Diego's Comic Con last month. The campaign enticed fans with an exclusive trailer that they each had to individually tweet in order to view.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

While the content reward feature seems most immediately well-suited to entertainment brands, Twitter pointed to an ad from Barista Bar offering its "100-year-old secret family recipe" as an example of how other classes of advertisers could also take advantage.

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The ads come after Twitter reported a second consecutive quarter of underwhelming advertising sales growth last week, likely in part due to months of anemic user growth.

As it scrambles to keep advertiser attention with more attractive ad products, the company is looking for new ways to play to the platform's unique set of strengths -- immediacy, cultural relevance and a status as a favored public forum for customer service shoutouts and complaints.

The last of the three is Twitter's target with these new ads. The hope is that advertisers will be able to expand their reach by enlisting loyal customers and fans to effectively do their work for them.