An Indian parliamentary panel’s summons to representatives of Twitter, including CEO Jack Dorsey, is unlikely to hurt the social media platform’s advertising and marketing revenue, experts said.
Companies have not yet expressed any concerns over advertising and promotions on the platform, they said. However, repeated and sustained pressure from the panel or government authorities may hit the political discourse and content generated ahead of the general elections, advertisers and marketers said.
“Advertising follows eyeballs. I don’t think there will be any short-term impact if users continue using the platform but over a period of time, if there is erosion of trust in any brand, then it has an impact,” said Ashish Bhasin, CEO, South Asia, at Dentsu Aegis Network. “A company as big as Twitter and of that international scale will have a way of sorting this out. I don’t see any significant impact from an advertising perspective.”
According to Shashi Sinha, CEO of IPG Mediabrands, a lot depends on what actions the government takes. “From a brand point of view, there should not be anything to worry about. In any case, it is a small medium – it is not a big thing in our scheme of things. We use it for influencer management and those influencers will not go away. It is basically to do with the political filth. Most of the brands play in the safe area and I am not concerned right now,” Sinha said.
On Monday, the parliamentary standing committee on information technology refused to meet officials from Twitter India and insisted that CEO Dorsey should appear before it in 15 days. The committee wants to examine the issue of safeguarding the rights of citizens on social media and online news platforms.
Twitter had 30.4 million active users in India last year, according to Statista.
“A lot depends on what exactly comes out as a possible legislation or Twitter guidelines, but this could have a huge impact from a political elections perspective as the actions that can get taken against the company would be social in nature,” said Kapil Gupta, CEO of OM Logic Consulting, which has worked on campaigns for the Congress, BJP, Lok Dal and Akali Dal, besides companies.
He said corporate campaigns will not get impacted but political causes and campaigns are more likely to get hit by these developments. The usage of Twitter in India is not built on people sharing their stories but on “spreading propaganda and fake news,” he said.
Leave a Reply