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Dozens of reporters — inside Apple’s Steve Jobs Theater

or back at their offices — spent hours on Sept. 12 tweeting

about Apple, sharing details about its two new iPhones and

Apple Watch.

Yet despite all this free press attention, the tech giant spent

what several marketers considered to be a significant

amount on Twitter. On Sept. 12, Apple had a promoted trend

($200,000 per day), a custom build for “like for reminder”

($250,000 for several days), promoted tweets in at least 12

languages (CPMs depend on budget, going from $0.50 to $8)

and a hashflag and a livestream of the event. The last two

components were probably free, and the other prices are

standard, according to sources. Prices are based on what

Twitter charges individually for the products, according to

interviews with six marketers; Apple may have bought them

as a bundle.

The decision to spend so much on a platform that isn’t

Facebook or Google perhaps isn’t as crazy for a trillion-dollar

company. Apple’s spend is an example of its attempt to

dominate the conversation during a launch and appeal to the

fandom and journalists on Twitter, which has long promoted

itself as a platform that leads the conversation, more so than

the rest of social media. Apple’s early adopters, including

journalists, are perhaps more commonly found on there than

on Facebook, where it’s currently not running any ads.

“Apple is garnering a deeper relationship with their most devout

fans and haters and gaining insight into all of the data around the

launch conversations. I’d love to see the backend of what they got

on that campaign buy,” said Tammy Gordon, president of Verified

Strategy who previously led social marketing at AARP.