The World's Biggest Advertising Company Will Double Its Spending On Twitter

On a panel Friday at the Cannes Lions advertising awards festival in France, WPP CEO Martin Sorrell said his firm would double the amount of money it spends on Twitter ads on behalf of its clients in 2014.

The amount of money at stake is not a ton - $100 million this year compared with $50 million in 2013 - but it is a nice vote of confidence given that WPP is the largest advertising services company in the world, and that its clients include companies with big-time ad budgets like Gillette and Ford.

It could also be a harbinger of things to come for Twitter. In 2012, Sorrell famously announced that WPP would double its spend on Facebook to $200 million in what some see as a major step in the platform's journey toward becoming a $6 billion ad business.

Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser reported Sorrell's remarks in a note to investors Friday morning. Wieser also noted that Sorrell said one of his largest clients had found Twitter, along with Google's YouTube, to be the most effective social media platform the brand advertises on.

PRG has Twitter listed as a hold, with Wieser writing he expects the company to double the size of its ad business and finish the year with $1.4 billion in total revenues. That figure would be in line with Twitter's guidance of between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion.

"Most importantly, we continue to believe that revenue growth can occur independently from significant user growth given the unique characteristics of the medium, as its user base is large enough and its impact on consumers is important enough to warrant substantially more spending by advertisers on Twitter," Wieser wrote.