What kind of advertising works best on Twitter?

Twitter provides 9 types of Ad cards for business and individuals to promote.

1. App Card
2. Lead Generation Card
3. Photo Card
4. Gallery Card
5. Website Card
6. Player Card
7. Summary Card
8. Product Card
9. Conversational Card

Each card is targeted for a specific campaign needed to achieve one single target. While the level of engagement Twitter provides is very high when it comes to sarcasm/jokes/controversial contents, Twitter was never considered as an effective medium of sales by us.

My company was into online ticket sales for college events. We extensively used Facebook as a platform for reach-ability and sales. Though Facebook contributed only 5% of the ticket sales it did contribute to over 15–20 of the website views and clicks.

On the other hand, Twitter with the same budget did not contribute even 1/5th of the sales/views/clicks.

However, when it comes to sharing general content or engaging with users, Twitter was our first choice.

Of-course the odds were in our favor. Our Target Audience was college going students aged 18–22 and this fueled our success.

To pick the top 3 options, Photo/Gallery Card and Website Card are the most effective form of advertising that can work on twitter. You can get the views, you can get the likes but you many never get the app downloads/sales.

Much like this:

Here’s an interesting piece of information on the effect of mentioning prices. Our results were surprisingly similar.

Source: We Analyzed 7,712 Twitter Ads And Here’s What We Learned

Pro Tip: Here’s something I have found useful and is recommended by numerous DM folks: Rule of 1:2:1

Do 4 tweets per day.

1 tweet about information related to your industry for your audience. It can be a related news article or some fact pack.

2 tweets about your company. One for sales and one about product/company update.

1 tweet about general topic. Can be a anything that excites the audience enough.

Do not overburden your audience. They do not want to see your feed all day and will end up un-following you.

And yes, never forget to reply to a query or a fan message.

To be honest, I am an old fashioned guy with a twist of modernity when it comes to Social Media. When In  twitter I relay on content and hashtags. Very relevant and will  managed hashtags campaigns. Promoting tweets and accounts is very effective; but then again it is always about your products or services. I believe there is no right way for advertising on social media, there is a wrong way thou. Social Media is a new and evolving science and we need to approach it like this. 

It depends on what kind of audience you are targeting and what kind of your product or service is about. Generally, content based ads are more engaging, specially with combination of graphical content such as image or videos. Creating ads involving videos or images attracts more audience to engagae with the content.

It is also important to keep in mind about what is your target that you want to achieve from each particular ads you run. For example some brands run ad campaigns to grow their followers on twitter or some for lead generation or to send the audience to their website to know about the business.

So, it is always better to include graphic content in your ads, because it sure does gain people's attenion towards your ads and before advertising always research about what kind of audience you are looking for rather than just running your ads to everyone and wasting money on unecessary leads.

Twitters advertising depends on which country are you in what is the outcome you are looking for and other factors. Nothing called the best in adverstising. I suggest try AB testing. And decide what gives you the return. 

Just like any social media page Twitter works best when creating a buzz and keeping your product/service in the eyes of the comsumers, that being said, creating awareness to the consumers and creating a buzz, are not a one time thing, and with proper market research, creativity, and a sense of humor, Twitter turns out to be a good source for Ads within the limits of internet ethics

Khizra has given comprehensive answer on this topic. Just one more thing that ask audience int the tweet to re-tweet and like to make it viral.

Advertising can only be effective if its creative!!! which should attract ur targeted audience towards u... as on twitter creativity can be shown through ur content which ur giving to ur audience to read... the words, the phrases shuld be so beautifully framed that it shuld not go out frm the readers mind and attract them towards it nd let them talk about it more nd more.... along with the beautiful designs, pictures of the products etc u provide...

Twitter is a kind of press release so you need to approach it that way. Weather is a new product or service or deriving conversation for a certain topic which your product or service has a direct relation with. Think of it as a place your followers will get inside information, feel, or look to your products or service.

 There are types of ad cards you can use like product card, photo card, player card, lead generation card, website card or summery card "Sneak Peek Card" it all depends on the message you want to deliver to your followers on choosing which cards to go for. And of course you can always go promo twit which is in my opinion is very effective to delivering advertising messages. 

Involve your followers in conversation

running a special offer, while others work at any time.

1. Emphasize the need for urgencyTweets that use phrases such as “hurry,” “fast,” “now,” “quick,” “running out,” “supplies last,” and “limited time” see a 10% lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and a 10% higher link click rate (LCR).
2. Express discounts in percentagesTweets that advertise percentage discounts rather than price-based discounts see a 40% lower CPA.
3. Remember, newer is betterTweets that mention “new” products or services achieve a 10% lower CPA and a 26% lower cost-per-link-click (CPLC).
4. Avoid distracting hashtagsPromoted Tweets with hashtags see a 24% higher CPA and a 3% lower LCR. Keep the audience focused on your call to action and don’t include a hashtag in your Tweet copy.
5. Keep it short and sweetPromoted Tweets with 40-60 characters of copy result in a much lower CPA than longer Tweets.
6. Offer the audience the chance to winTweets that advertise a prize or competition with words like “win,” “contest,” or “sweepstakes” have a 40% lower CPA and a 1% lower CPLC.
7. Spark interest by asking a questionTweets that ask a question have a 9% lower CPLC and a 16% higher LCR.

Creative User generated content is the best way to advertise on twitter in my opinion,Online customer retention management is very key too.