Twitter doubles its Israel sales team

As Israel heads to elections, among the most significant arenas where candidates can try to gain influence are the social networks. Of these, Twitter stands out from the rest, having already played a role in Israel’s previous rounds as well as in other campaigns around the world. In an exclusive interview, Federico Paderni, managing director of Twitter in Israel, said Twitter “does not intend to make a profit from the elections in Israel or anywhere else in the world.”

Twitter policy prohibits posting political ads on its social network in general and particularly on election days. The company defines political content as content referring to a candidate, political party, elected or appointed government official, election, referendum, voting methods, legislation, regulation, directive or judicial result.

“There are several efforts we make in every election system in the world, and specifically in Israel. Our goal is to preserve the integrity that exists on Twitter,” Paderni said. “Of course, we have a very clear policy against manipulation in this arena, and we aim to preserve that integrity with the help of artificial intelligence tools and human teams that will check content. During elections, it is very important to stop, block or suspend any effort or attempt by any type of entity that wants to interfere in the elections.”

Paderni explained that these diligent checks apply to Israel as well. “We follow the conversations in Hebrew, of course, and we respond to user reports. Along with this, we also cooperate with the Israeli authorities, which is very important for the success of the elections in Israel. Our policy and communication teams work directly with them and there is a direct open channel.”

There have been attempts in Israel to influence election results through bots, among other things. How do you combat that?

“It’s important to clarify that ‘bot’ is a definition of a user account and ‘spam’ is a behavioral definition. To fight bad

bots or spam, we use machine learning, artificial intelligence and human teams. To make clear, over 50% of all content that violates our rules in this arena is detected automatically and presented for human review. Our goal is not to eradicate all bots but to stop those bots which violate our laws and policies.”

Right before its dispersal, the Knesset approved legislation stating that any paid-for election propaganda – whether on behalf of a party, candidate, or person working on their behalf – must be signified as such. In other words, any bot, comment, or influencer receiving payment from a political entity – will be required to be linked to the political party or funder.

Twitter was not familiar with the legislation when asked about it, but made clear its commitment to working with all relevant parties in the government and civil society, along with experts. Regarding paid partnerships on the platform, Twitter stated, “Ads that are published as organic

tweets will require disclosures to viewers indicating the commercial nature of this content. In addition, to comply with the rules of the social network, users – including creators and brands, participating in paid partnerships – are responsible for complying with all laws and regulations.”

THERE IS a sense that Twitter highlights toxic arguments conducted on the platform, and sometimes misrepresents support for politicians. What is your position on this matter?

“We are testing a new mode on Twitter called Safety Mode that will be launched soon [the feature temporarily blocks accounts for seven days for using potentially harmful language or for posting unwanted comments to other accounts]. The idea is to boost the health of the platform, and it’s in line with other tools I’ve mentioned such as conversation control, and also options to control the conversation more.

“These will actually help reduce and minimize the visibility

users have in a certain interaction on Twitter, and in this way avoid the conversation. We’re trying to provide a healthy user experience, it is definitely one of our top priorities.”

Paderni is an Italian residing in Ireland, married and the father of two children. He has managed Twitter’s operations in Israel for three years and oversees its advertising business in Israel. He has worked at Twitter for a decade, and before that was at LinkedIn and Microsoft.

Twitter maintains continuous commercial activity in Israel with sales teams that have been focused on the Israeli market for almost six years, working with companies in the fin-tech, crypto, marketplace, technology and other sectors.

“These companies want to leverage the potential on Twitter to reach a global audience, as in the US or Europe, and we like to call them ‘professional advertisers.’ Our goal is to improve their commercial and marketing activities,”

explained Paderni.

“The start-up ecosystem in Israel is very large, of course. We have worked with a variety of companies, from eToro to Plus 500, including Wix, Fiverr and Monday.com. These companies mainly focus on launching new products or new campaigns on Twitter.”

According to Paderni, Israeli companies advertise mainly outside of Israel, in order to reach a wider audience. “All the big companies in Israel advertise mainly outside of Israel, and I think this is true for all the other platforms as well.”

Twitter has two teams based in Dublin who work on the Israeli market and serve the Israeli companies. The first team is responsible for large advertisers, the second team is responsible for small and medium-sized businesses.

ACTIVITY IN ISRAEL grew in 2019 by 35%, said Paderni, a figure higher than global growth overall. Now, he reveals, the company has decided to double the sales team serving Israeli customers.

“Over the last three years, business has doubled and the team has also doubled in size, and there are three reasons for this,” he said, “The first, we work in Israel mainly with startups, and they raised more than $25 billion in 2021, which is like a twofold increase year on year. It’s great for the ecosystem in Israel, and it’s something we leverage because it means there are more companies to work with.

“The second element in our growth is related to the fact that in terms of audience and companies, entities are always looking for a successful platform to reach new users. We have over 238 million users that can be monetized, and very strong double-digit growth in the last two years. And the third reason is the features and products that we’ve launched to help companies get new users.”

Paderni visited Israel last month to hold a workshop event in Tel Aviv for clients, advertisers and partners, called TweetsMeanBusiness, which updated them on the impact of conversation, the features, and tools under development, and to help them recruit users.

How important is Israel to Twitter?

“In terms of our commercial revenue, Israel is definitely one of the fastest growing markets in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region in the last two or three years. The growth in revenue and the size of the team also gives you an idea of how important Israel is to us, and how right it is.”

Twitter is seeing global growth in the number of its communities, including those relevant to Israeli advertisers. For example, tweets about #finance and #investment from non-professionals grew by 78% last year, and tech enthusiasts post 7.8 times more tweets than the average Twitter user, discussing topics like #NFTs, #Metaverse, #startups, and more.

Competition in the advertising market is very tough. Facebook and Google have accurate information about users, opportunities and highly developed tools. Why should companies put their money with you?

“Ultimately, Twitter is used because they want to join interesting conversations, and because Twitter is the fastest social network to see what’s happening in the world. Companies and brands are very interested in these tools. We’ve seen that 35% of Twitter users tend to use new products more, and companies want to take advantage of this to their benefit. So, it’s true, platforms like Google and Facebook have capabilities and a large reach, but we provide great engagement and very valuable conversations.”

What were Israelis talking about in 2021? According to Twitter, the tweet in Israel that received the most likes last year was that of the current Prime Minister Yair Lapid, when he announced “I was able” to form a government. That tweet garnered over 15,000 likes, along with several other very popular tweets, most of which are also related to political figures: Gideon Sa’ar with “ignore the spin” in reaction to rumors he would join forces with Benjamin Netanyahu in the coming election (9,654 likes), and tweets by latenight host Lior Shlain (11,833 likes) and his partner, Transportation Minister Merav Michaeli (9,880 likes), announcing the birth of their son, Uri.

Paderni explained the Israeli discourse, and broke it down into several elements.

“There are some conversations and discussions on Twitter that are important globally, like politics and sports. This is especially true for Ligat Ha’Al [Israel’s top soccer league]. I think that Maccabi Tel Aviv is among the most ‘followed’ teams in Israel. There’s a very dominant conversation on the platform about it.

“The second type consists of conversations from the global arena that also affect Israel. Let’s say, conversations around finance, trade and crypto, and we’ve seen a two-fold jump in growth from year to year. This is also very noticeable in Israel. The third type are discussions and conversations arising from the tech industry and the startups.” (Globes/TNS)