Twitter predicts ad surge

Chief operating office of Twitter, Dick Costolo, has forecasted an advertising boom as the micro-blogging platform prepares to launch a new advertising model.

According to the company’s blog, its ‘Promoted Tweets’ platform will take the form of ordinary Tweets that businesses and organisations want to highlight to wider groups of users.

It has so far signed up Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks and Virgin America to the platform.

Costolo told Wired.com that he believed the company will eventually become profitable, but he declined to provide a timeframe for achieving profitability.

“We were valued at over a billion dollars last September, so we’re going to live in a world where we need to be generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. We’re thinking about big, big numbers,” Costolo told Reuters.

MPG Australia licenses micromarketing software

MPG Australia has announced that it will enter a licensing agreement with Pacific Micromarketing to utilise its Generation 3 geographical targeting and analysis tool.

Pacific Micromarketing is a consumer insight, segmentation and marketing analysis company that provides tools to analyse consumers, markets, market potential and resource allocation.

MPG managing director Kristian Barnes said the agreement will strengthen MPG’s position as one of the leading direct response agencies in Australia.

“Our client’s requirements in direct response services have been steadily increasing. Clients expect us to provide them with an integrated data and direct strategy covering geographical analysis, insights into customer behaviour and detailed ROI evaluation. By introducing Pacific Micromarketing’s Micromarketer Generation 3 software in-house, we’ll be able to improve our strategic capabilities, channel planning and analytics to deliver improved ROI for our clients,” stressed Barnes.

MPG indicated that it would use the tool for below-the-line strategic channel planning and post analysis, and use insights to develop creative messaging and to check geographical coverage of above the line media.

The organisation is a joint venture between the Mitchell Communication Group and Havas communications consulting.