Twitter wants all its advertisers to be verified

It’s just over 6 months since tycoon Elon Musk bought the social network Twitter and the changes haven’t stopped. With each new news it seems that the stability and profitability of the social network is still far from being achieved. Today we want to tell you what are the new conditions to advertise on Twitter, so that this new policy does not take you by surprise.

Until a few days ago the Twitter advertising policy and the verification system were two totally different aspects, so it was just a matter of paying a campaign to place advertising on the platform, as it happened in any other social network, however a few days ago this changed and now companies that want to publish their ads on the platform will have to pay the golden verification. This is the latest strategy taken by the social network to ensure a user experience free of spam and scams, but it remains to be seen if it can work.

 

Twitter fights bots and seeks to gain profitability

We can reduce Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter to two very clear objectives: make it more profitable and eliminate bots and spam. For this he had to make a reform to the entire social network, the truth is that this did not take anyone by surprise, because since the tycoon was part of the board of directors of Twitter all his proposals were aimed at meeting these objectives.

Once Elon Musk took over the board, the objective was clear but not the procedure, and as soon as he took over the administrative offices, a series of changes began at Twitter that did not seem to be very successful, nor did they make much sense. One of them was the dismissal of more than half of the workers, which caused a wave of pirated content as they did not have enough employees to detect and download this type of content. After a few days at the helm Elon Musk announced the other big change at Twitter: paying for verification

 

Twitter Blue

The plan for a new verification evolved into Twitter Blue, with which the user could get a badge, the famous blue checkmark, which gives a higher degree of authenticity to the account. Before Musk’s arrival, this badge was completely free and was achieved by authenticating through the phone, of course it was an exclusive option for public figures and organizations, in order to avoid scams on the social network.

Once the Twitter Blue program was launched, the verification process was opened to anyone willing to pay $8 per month. Of course, criticism was not long in coming and a wave of verified users emerged, even those who impersonated a famous figure were verified.

This first wave of verification was contrasted with Musk’s other goal, to put an end to bots and fake accounts, because many parody accounts or fake profiles took the opportunity to get the blue checkmark to gain the trust of users.

The company made amends by adding an extra review to ensure that subscribed accounts meet all eligibility criteria. In fact, you can now grab Twitter blue, but you will not get the famous blue checkmark if your account has been active for less than six months and in the case of parody accounts if the profile does not make it clear.

If you decide to hire Twitter Blue your advantages do not end with getting a blue badge, because the service promises a new and improved user experience, so you would have features such as editing tweets, have more characters and upload longer videos, in addition to having 50% of ads in your feed.

 

Verification for organizations

Faced with the wave of verified scam accounts, Twitter announced a new special verification option for organizations, for which they would have to pay a thousand dollars a month.

Thus the verification system on Twitter would have three badges, each accessible with a different fee and allows the user to distinguish whether the verified account belongs to a company, an individual or a government institution. Thus individuals will have the blue verification for a fee of 8 USD per month (11 USD if iOS users). While government accounts will have a gray badge and will pay 1,000 USD per month to maintain this verification. The third category is made up of companies with gold verification, which would also be paying USD 1,000 per month to maintain the badge.

However, the new plan was not very attractive to the vast majority of organizations and companies that already held the verification, as they showed no interest in keeping the badge. In fact, the White House itself said it was not interested in keeping the verification.

 

April 2023 was the deadline for users verified by the old regime to subscribe to Twitter Blue or lose verification, most influencers and public figures did not do so and a few days ago we saw how they lost the blue checkmark in their bios, but this change did not last more than a couple of days, as the much appreciated blue checkmark surprisingly returned to a large majority of profiles, even though celebrities are not paying. Then Elon Musk claimed that he was paying for celebrity verification.

 

The ad policy

For many specialists Elon Musk’s decisions were rather arbitrary, these reforms finally affected the finances of the social network, after December 2022 brands as big as Coca-Cola, Nestle, Chanel, CNN or AT&T will stop investing in advertising within the social network, in fact specialists estimate that in December Twitter lost 50% of its large advertisers, which meant a loss of $ 750 million in advertising.

After the exodus of advertisers in the first weeks of December 2022, the situation became more complicated for the microblogging network, even Apple threatened not only to withdraw its advertising from the platform but also considered withdrawing the application from its official store.

By the end of December 2022, the solution to these liquidity problems was to announce a series of benefits for companies that were already paying for advertising. The company went so far as to offer half a million dollars in advertising to advertisers who committed to spend 500 thousand dollars on the platform. Large companies were not the only ones to benefit from this change, as Twitter created financing plans with more promotions and discounts for smaller companies.

 

Everything seemed to be fine between the social network and advertisers, however, everything indicates that Twitter’s new plan is to pass companies through the cash register, as it was recently announced that only verified subscribers could advertise, which means a monthly cost of one thousand dollars to pay for verification as a company. Although it does not apply to companies that already spend a thousand dollars a month on advertising on Twitter, as they will no longer have to pay for verification.

This strategy aims to increase the quality of content and optimize the user experience on Twitter, both for the advertiser and the user. This measure is expected to put an end to accounts that uploaded misleading advertising and those that were dedicated to phishing, since now uploading advertising requires a higher level of security.

 

The measure seems to have a certain logic, since there will be no fake or scam accounts uploading advertisements without first going through the verification process. However, some experts suggest that this measure may fall short, as despite the measures there has been an increase in verified profiles promoting scams, such as cryptocurrency investment, even with the golden badge. This means that scammers are willing to pay to continue deceiving and Twitter can do little as the profile and the scam is created outside the platform.

 

What do you think this latest strategy is what Twitter needs to improve its finances and crack down on malicious content or are we seeing another strategy that backfires on Elon Musk.