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Source: Twitter’s Ad Platform Launches Tonight

32 points by davidedicillo 17y ago

jackowayed 17y ago
Do people really search Twitter enough to make this their cash cow? (Assuming they refrain from putting ads in the normal timeline, and just have them on search.) The last paragraph implies that that's what they're doing, but it seems that searches are infrequent enough that it'll be hard for this to make them real profits. Plus, if people dislike the ads at all, at least one client (probably many), will be "the ad-free client", and many people will start searching through that/those clients.
- tjarratt 17y ago
  I'm not sure that's true actually. The vast majority of users I've seen find a client and stick with it. While power users will probably get annoyed by the ads and find a new one, I suspect an average user will learn to cope, or simply stop using the service.
  - jfornear 17y ago
    Yep, I just use the free Twitterrific client on the iPhone and it actually serves high quality, unobtrusive, and occasionally helpful ads via The Deck. I've never been bothered by them enough to consider jumping ship. Advertising isn't inherently undesirable, but even if it were, its annoyance would still have to exceed the cost of migration for users to make a switch.
- _delirium 17y ago
  My guess is that they're being cautious, and rolling out ads somewhere they think won't lead to a big backlash. They're already profitable with just the search-feed deals with Google and Microsoft, so they can afford to take it slowly, I think.
- alex1 17y ago
  They do have plans to put these promoted tweets in users' timelines... From AdAge (http://adage.com/digiconf10/article?article_id=143237 http://adage.com/digiconf10/article?article_id=143237): During this roll-out, Twitter will study how resonance works and decide in the fourth quarter whether -- or how -- to take ads beyond search and into users' Twitter feeds. "Is it great in search and horrible in the timeline? We are going to test and test and test," Mr. Costolo said.
- sunchild 17y ago
  Data point: Search is the only feature of Twitter that I use. I mostly use it to see whether other people are buzzing about something at that very moment.
  - stanleydrew 17y ago
    Right, but is that kind of search really monetizeable? I guess we'll find out.
fookyong 17y ago
It's certainly a tumultuous time if you've based your business on a "feature" of Twitter that it could feasibly replicate itself. http://tweetup.com http://tweetup.com launched just yesterday proclaiming their advertising value-add to the Twitter ecosystem. The atmosphere there must be pretty tense today... As for Promoted Tweets, I wonder how this affects the ToS for people who are already using one of those tweet-brokering services. Are those services now dead in the water? What about if you take direct payments for a sponsored tweet and thus circumvent Twitter's ad platform - will this be against the new ToS?
- robryan 17y ago
  Well if someone decided putting all there eggs in the easy to implement Twitter feature basket they are asking for trouble. I wouldn't assume there was any feature that just worked around the Twitter API only that Twitter might not implement themselves at some point.
milkshakes 17y ago
i see the sponsored retweet market as more convincing than the sponsored tweet one. targeting influencers based on the demographics/behavior (think retweet) of their followers just seems so much more relevant than advertising against search terms. i know there are other services that already do this, but imho twitter should consider offering this directly, alongside the search campaigns, so that advertisers can manage all of their twitter campaigns from one spot. they could also build a more convenient, "official" system that makes it dead easy for influencers to sell out. if they can't gain their own traction based on convenience, they always have the option to pull an apple and simply cripple the competition through their TOS (they could simply ban third party analytics services and sell the data to the third party companies, or they could just ban other competition outright. it's their platform, after all) but that would obviously suck. hopefuly they won't do this.
alexro 17y ago
I'm wondering about their seemingly dumb approach. In my opinion it would be better to charge on per click basis for the links in the tweets. Say if want your links to be clickable you route them through a specific shortener and then Twitter counts the clicks. Others will have their links as text. Seems pretty fair to me.

32 points by davidedicillo 17y ago

Do people really search Twitter enough to make this their cash cow? (Assuming they refrain from putting ads in the normal timeline, and just have them on search.) The last paragraph implies that that's what they're doing, but it seems that searches are infrequent enough that it'll be hard for this to make them real profits. Plus, if people dislike the ads at all, at least one client (probably many), will be "the ad-free client", and many people will start searching through that/those clients.

tjarratt 17y ago
I'm not sure that's true actually. The vast majority of users I've seen find a client and stick with it. While power users will probably get annoyed by the ads and find a new one, I suspect an average user will learn to cope, or simply stop using the service.
- jfornear 17y ago
  Yep, I just use the free Twitterrific client on the iPhone and it actually serves high quality, unobtrusive, and occasionally helpful ads via The Deck. I've never been bothered by them enough to consider jumping ship. Advertising isn't inherently undesirable, but even if it were, its annoyance would still have to exceed the cost of migration for users to make a switch.
_delirium 17y ago
My guess is that they're being cautious, and rolling out ads somewhere they think won't lead to a big backlash. They're already profitable with just the search-feed deals with Google and Microsoft, so they can afford to take it slowly, I think.
alex1 17y ago
They do have plans to put these promoted tweets in users' timelines... From AdAge (http://adage.com/digiconf10/article?article_id=143237 http://adage.com/digiconf10/article?article_id=143237): During this roll-out, Twitter will study how resonance works and decide in the fourth quarter whether -- or how -- to take ads beyond search and into users' Twitter feeds. "Is it great in search and horrible in the timeline? We are going to test and test and test," Mr. Costolo said.
sunchild 17y ago
Data point: Search is the only feature of Twitter that I use. I mostly use it to see whether other people are buzzing about something at that very moment.
- stanleydrew 17y ago
  Right, but is that kind of search really monetizeable? I guess we'll find out.

fookyong 17y ago

It's certainly a tumultuous time if you've based your business on a "feature" of Twitter that it could feasibly replicate itself. http://tweetup.com http://tweetup.com launched just yesterday proclaiming their advertising value-add to the Twitter ecosystem. The atmosphere there must be pretty tense today... As for Promoted Tweets, I wonder how this affects the ToS for people who are already using one of those tweet-brokering services. Are those services now dead in the water? What about if you take direct payments for a sponsored tweet and thus circumvent Twitter's ad platform - will this be against the new ToS?

robryan 17y ago
Well if someone decided putting all there eggs in the easy to implement Twitter feature basket they are asking for trouble. I wouldn't assume there was any feature that just worked around the Twitter API only that Twitter might not implement themselves at some point.

milkshakes 17y ago

i see the sponsored retweet market as more convincing than the sponsored tweet one. targeting influencers based on the demographics/behavior (think retweet) of their followers just seems so much more relevant than advertising against search terms. i know there are other services that already do this, but imho twitter should consider offering this directly, alongside the search campaigns, so that advertisers can manage all of their twitter campaigns from one spot. they could also build a more convenient, "official" system that makes it dead easy for influencers to sell out. if they can't gain their own traction based on convenience, they always have the option to pull an apple and simply cripple the competition through their TOS (they could simply ban third party analytics services and sell the data to the third party companies, or they could just ban other competition outright. it's their platform, after all) but that would obviously suck. hopefuly they won't do this.

alexro 17y ago

I'm wondering about their seemingly dumb approach. In my opinion it would be better to charge on per click basis for the links in the tweets. Say if want your links to be clickable you route them through a specific shortener and then Twitter counts the clicks. Others will have their links as text. Seems pretty fair to me.