Twitter’s new solution for measuring brand campaigns: in-tweet surveys

Twitter is testing the theory that advertisers want more than just campaign impression and click-through data to understand the value of paying to promote messages on the information network.

Today, the company announced a partnership with Nielsen that provides select brand partners with an in-tweet survey tool for polling Twitter users and measuring the impact of their campaigns.

The limited-release brand survey tool, currently available to a small set of advertisers, enables Twitter customers to create, publish, and share micro surveys to Twitter users in the same way they already use Promoted Tweets. The surveys appear in Twitter user timelines on web and mobile, and can be filled out from within the tweet.

“This is a native experience for the user, and we believe it will give brands better insights to determine purchase intent, overall awareness, and other advertising metrics and analytics that can lead to greater engagement on Twitter,” Twitter vice president of brand strategy Joel Lunenfeld said in a blog post.

Coincidentally, the measurement tool comes just days after Facebook began talking up a partnership with Datalogix. The Datalogix tool helps the social network’s advertisers better understand the impact of their campaigns and make the connection between Facebook ad impressions and store sales. Twitter is taking a completely different approach with surveys by helping advertisers get direct feedback from target audiences. Both methodologies, however, are meant to move marketers and advertisers away from thinking about the success of their social campaigns in terms of click-throughs alone.

Twitter said it would make brand surveys available to additional partners in early 2013.

Photo credit: BasBoerman/Flickr