Twitter announces partnership with major ad agency Starcom MediaVest Group

Twitter has announced it has signed a multi-year agreement with Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) as part of a push by the social media giant to form partnerships with traditional Madison Avenue ad agencies.

According to Reuters, the deal is estimated to be potentially worth several hundred million dollars a year and includes preferred inventory and a direct pipeline into Twitter’s data feed for media planning purposes.

A key aspect of the deal will be joint research into how people use Twitter while watching television, with SMG hoping to monetise the relationship between television content and social interaction on Twitter.

The joint research will parallel the social media giant’s partnership with television ratings and market research firm Nielsen on gathering real-time comments about live television programs from Twitter.

While Twitter’s revenues are currently estimated at less than $US600 million, mobile display advertising is becoming an increasingly lucrative market for social media services.

As SmartCompany recently reported, in the display sector of the mobile ad market, publishers (including social media services such as Twitter) controlled 52% of US mobile display revenue in 2012, compared to just 39% in 2011, at the expense of ad networks (companies that display advertising in other company’s apps and mobile sites).

In turn, mobile display advertising in the US accounted for 39% of all mobile ads in the US during 2012, with traditional web search ads still accounting for 61% of sales.