3 ms·

> $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none at all. Adverse selection. The people

by DeRock 4y ago

> $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none at all. Adverse selection. The people willing to pay to remove ads are probably your most profitable users to show ads to.

danpalmer 4y ago
That's a good point, but while I don't have any data, I've heard anecdotally that for services that implement paid user tiers with no advertising, they always make much more from paid users than ads, on the order of 5-10x. While there is a distribution on how much ads users are worth, it's not enough to overcome that difference _at scale_. There are a small number of users who are worth $$$$, but they're a small amount of absolute revenue because there are so few.
- vasco 4y ago
  You're making the same point that you're replying to. The juiciest users pay, so the non-paying users are the penny pinchers that convert way less on ads, so the ad revenue is obviously very low compared to the revenue from the paid users. Similar to how people self selected into iOS and android and to this day its way more effective to advertise to less price sensitive iOS users than Android users with cheap phones, though the effect was even larger in the early days.
  - andirk 4y ago
    Similar to how the CTR of ads on msn.com or live.com was once way higher than everywhere else because anyone who was fooled in to using those default start pages was probably more easily fooled in all aspects.
ProfessorLayton 4y ago
The people willing to pay, the heavy users, are also the people most engaged and posting content on the platform. Content that twitter needs for less heavy users to consume, bringing in eyeballs for advertisers. Continuing to show ads to paying content creators is double-dipping.
- nightski 4y ago
  I'd expect those two to intersect for sure, but I imagine there are plenty of people with enough disposable cash that enjoy twitter but contribute very little. Or maybe I am just an extreme outlier :)
- dmix 4y ago
  I doubt $8 will be the only option. I’d bet $1000 that there will be a $16 (or whatever the ROI bar is) tier to be completely ad free. $8 entry fee seems reasonable from a pyscological perspective. It sounds like the modern version of $9.99, since 3 numbers is taboo on the Twitter style internet and 8 sounds better than 9
  - mc32 4y ago
    They _should_ have the corp version. Corp accounts (@corp_name) should be like $1000/year or something like that (probably could charge $10,000 and more). Nike, Coke, Dell, Disney, etc.
    - dmix 4y ago
      100% I agree. Basically a tier for global brands that manage multiple regional accounts and need top level support. Which I'm sure already exists informally like all B2B SaaS sites that have listed monthly fees where big accounts are handled personally. But more to your point I think there should be a paid bracket below that tier of global mega corps which is formalized and public. At least for transparency and marketing reasons.
    - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
      You know — that is a genuinely good idea. It's easily the best monetization idea for Twitter I've heard, especially amidst the last decade of nonsense about "brand advertising" and "blue checkmarks." Just one thing — add a couple more zeros. $100k/yr is not unreasonable for an enterprise offering here. They could introduce all kinds of B2B features for companies that want to use Twitter as a support forum (or, given Twitter's popularity, are forced into using it as a support forum). Off the top of my head — things like rolling up different sub-accounts under one main corporate account, formalizing the ability for multiple support staff to work one account (and charge per seat!), having deeper integration with Zendesk and other ticketing systems, extracting metrics and showing dashboards for how support (and sentiment) is doing, introducing some AI/ML to help companies match Twitter accounts of their customers to internal customer IDs, enabling ML-powered DMing of targeted offers, introducing chatbots that can be trained to field support queries over DM, etc, etc. Anyway, it's a really good idea. Maybe you should've bought Twitter.

by DeRock 4y ago

danpalmer 4y ago

That's a good point, but while I don't have any data, I've heard anecdotally that for services that implement paid user tiers with no advertising, they always make much more from paid users than ads, on the order of 5-10x. While there is a distribution on how much ads users are worth, it's not enough to overcome that difference _at scale_. There are a small number of users who are worth $$$$, but they're a small amount of absolute revenue because there are so few.

vasco 4y ago
You're making the same point that you're replying to. The juiciest users pay, so the non-paying users are the penny pinchers that convert way less on ads, so the ad revenue is obviously very low compared to the revenue from the paid users. Similar to how people self selected into iOS and android and to this day its way more effective to advertise to less price sensitive iOS users than Android users with cheap phones, though the effect was even larger in the early days.
- andirk 4y ago
  Similar to how the CTR of ads on msn.com or live.com was once way higher than everywhere else because anyone who was fooled in to using those default start pages was probably more easily fooled in all aspects.

ProfessorLayton 4y ago

The people willing to pay, the heavy users, are also the people most engaged and posting content on the platform. Content that twitter needs for less heavy users to consume, bringing in eyeballs for advertisers. Continuing to show ads to paying content creators is double-dipping.

nightski 4y ago
I'd expect those two to intersect for sure, but I imagine there are plenty of people with enough disposable cash that enjoy twitter but contribute very little. Or maybe I am just an extreme outlier :)
dmix 4y ago
I doubt $8 will be the only option. I’d bet $1000 that there will be a $16 (or whatever the ROI bar is) tier to be completely ad free. $8 entry fee seems reasonable from a pyscological perspective. It sounds like the modern version of $9.99, since 3 numbers is taboo on the Twitter style internet and 8 sounds better than 9
- mc32 4y ago
  They _should_ have the corp version. Corp accounts (@corp_name) should be like $1000/year or something like that (probably could charge $10,000 and more). Nike, Coke, Dell, Disney, etc.
  - dmix 4y ago
    100% I agree. Basically a tier for global brands that manage multiple regional accounts and need top level support. Which I'm sure already exists informally like all B2B SaaS sites that have listed monthly fees where big accounts are handled personally. But more to your point I think there should be a paid bracket below that tier of global mega corps which is formalized and public. At least for transparency and marketing reasons.
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
    You know — that is a genuinely good idea. It's easily the best monetization idea for Twitter I've heard, especially amidst the last decade of nonsense about "brand advertising" and "blue checkmarks." Just one thing — add a couple more zeros. $100k/yr is not unreasonable for an enterprise offering here. They could introduce all kinds of B2B features for companies that want to use Twitter as a support forum (or, given Twitter's popularity, are forced into using it as a support forum). Off the top of my head — things like rolling up different sub-accounts under one main corporate account, formalizing the ability for multiple support staff to work one account (and charge per seat!), having deeper integration with Zendesk and other ticketing systems, extracting metrics and showing dashboards for how support (and sentiment) is doing, introducing some AI/ML to help companies match Twitter accounts of their customers to internal customer IDs, enabling ML-powered DMing of targeted offers, introducing chatbots that can be trained to field support queries over DM, etc, etc. Anyway, it's a really good idea. Maybe you should've bought Twitter.