Here’s the thing about Twitter: it has huge potential to become a lucrative advertising platform – something that Twitter has continually resisted, although its resolve may be weakening (or disappearing) based on recent comments by COO Dick Costelo.
There’s a great story in today’s New York Times about how advertising networks such as ad.ly and Ted (Pay Per Post) Murphy’s Izea are doing gangbusters by getting popular Twitter users such as John Chow to insert affiliate links into their Twitter feeds. Chow made $3,000 in October by simply posting these kind of links.
While Twitter has taken the stance that advertising would ruin the experience, the fact is relevant and contextual advertising could be a massive business. So while Twitter sits on the sidelines (until, apparently, next year), a growing number of entrepreneurs are moving into the Twitvertising market with no qualms or concerns about sullying the ecosystem.
You have to wonder what Twitter thinks of all this activity given it’s still scrambling to create a business model to justify more than $100-million in venture capital. As Google has illustrated, relevant advertising works: consumers like it because it meets their needs and interests, while advertisers like it because its targeted and measurable.
While there be huge concerns about spam, the great thing for Twitter users is they can quickly unfollow anyone who they believe is spamming them or sending them too many affiliate links. And if the advertising networks are smart, they will lean towards disclosure so that Twitter users receive some warning about the existence of ads.
As Twitter evolves, there’s no doubt advertising is going to be a growing part of the mix. Before it explodes, Twitter would be wise to lay out the ground rules of what’s acceptable. This isn’t suggest that these rules will be respected but at least Twitter will have made an effort to control the beast before it escapes out of the cage.
Would you be open to ads on Twitter? If so, how much advertising would you see as acceptable?
More: Robert Scoble has some thoughts about the emergence of Twitvertising, including his decision to sign up for ad.ly. I suspect the number of ad.ly members will be see strong growth over the next little while.
4 Comments
Why would anyone NOT be open to ads on Twitter? Ads are part of everyone's lives, so I don't see how Twitter would be any different.
The only people who don't want to see ads on Twitter are those that own properties that rely on ads. TV, newspapers, search engines, portals, bloggers, etc. Twitter could suck out a tremendous amount of revenue from other sources.
Turning the question on its head Mark – how many people out there would advertise on Twitter? Count AGORACOM as an advertiser on Day 1.
It's really a question of frequency and format. A lot of tweeters who aren't advertising come off as equally annoying and spammy because of their excessive tweeting/retweeting. I heard that the half life of a tweet is about 18 seconds. I can't attest to the accuracy of that, but if it were true, think of how many times one ad must be tweeted. Good thing it's so easy to unfollow.
Take a look at http://www.assetize.com/ here in Toronto
I think that Twitter should really build out an ecosystem where everyone monetizes their content for them (through app using their API of course) and then they take a cut on all of those revenue streams.
I like the deal they made with Google and Microsoft and assume it was very lucrative so they may not be in a big hurry to internally monetize through advertising. The subscription model is the way to go for them since others like Dell are making lots of money off of their platform so either charge/month or per year, or maybe even take a cut on direct sales if possible?!