Twitter’s daily view cap may affect advertisers – experts
By Abimbola Mohammed
The recent policy change made by Elon Musk, CEO Tesla, to put restrictions on the number of tweets users can read daily, has sparked reactions from marketers and brand owners as they believe Twitter’s decision could potentially hinder their advertising endeavours.
Musk, who gave his reasons for making such a policy, noted in a tweet that Artificial Intelligence (AI) firms are scraping the site for data to train chatbots for free. He added that the view cap will allow people to interact with others in the real world as the majority of people using the app are addicted to it.
His tweet read: “Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data.
“To address extreme levels of data scrapings &system manipulations, we’ve applied the following temporary limits: verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 post/day, unverified accounts to 600 posts/day and new unverified accounts to 300/days.”
“The reason I set a “View Limit” is because we are all Twitter addicts and need to go outside. I’m doing a good deed for the world here,” he added.
Speaking with experts in an exclusive interview with MARKETING EDGE on what this move means for advertisers, they noted that the “View Cap” will definitely affect advertisers and negatively reduce targeting and limit interaction between brands and its consumers.
Tobi Adekunle, Marketing Manager, Eskimi, said: “View cap by Twitter will definitely impact advertisers’ negatively. It will reduce reach, targeting limitations as advertisers may experience a decrease in numbers of people who see their ads.
“On the targeting limitations, if users’ views are capped they would have limited access to certain content or are excluded from certain features. It can become more challenging for advertisers to tailor their message to reach their desired target audience.”
Babatunde Fatai, Senior XR & Metaverse Engineer at MTN Nigeria, noted that the policy was made for a reason because Twitter is currently being abused by people basically scrapping the app for information or using it to train large language Artificial Intelligence (AI) models.
His words: “The reason for that policy is actually logical, because if you have lots of users on the app that are not humans but machines just gathering information then Twitter is actually losing to a large extent, while people that have these large language models are scrapping the information and actually not paying anything to the platform.”
He continued: “If for instance an average user can only view 600 posts daily it means advertisers would have in mind that their advertisement will only reach a much lower target audience because of the policy.
“Although a counter to that is no matter the policy Twitter might still put their advertiser forward and make them reach a particular number because they are paying for the advertisement. So let say you’re paying N5,000 to reach 5K people Twitter might be forced to make sure 5K people see the post. But looking at the policy at face value, it will definitely affect the reach advertisers expect. The new policy will also increase cost of advertisement because if you pay N5,000 and you are promised that 5K people will see the post, now where people get to see limited amount of post then in the long run Twitter will increase cost of advertisement, by then per view of advertisement will actually worth more when the views are counted.”
Fatai opined that advertisers may also need to change their strategy, focus more on impactful advertisement because it comes at a cost for target audience.
It was not sure if Musk will stick to the new policy as the day after he made the announcement, Musk increased the limit to 8000 for verified, 800 for unverified and 00 for new verified accounts.
Later the same day Musk tweeted that rate limits would be 10,000 posts per day for verified users, 1,000 posts per day for unverified accounts, and 500 posts per day for new unverified accounts.
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