I'm going to argue your point that Twitter users are poor or an undesirable demographic. According to Aug '08 Hitwise data: - 63% male - 57% from California -

I'm going to argue your point that Twitter users are poor or an undesirable demographic. According to Aug '08 Hitwise data: - 63% male - 57% from California - 25.9% 35-44 year olds - 14.7% "stable career" type (young, metro areas) - 12.3% "young cosmopolitan" (40-somethings, income > $250k) I'm not an advertising expert, but some of those seem to be desirable demographics. You're example of searching for BofA also doesn't make sense to me. If I worked for BofA, I wouldn't buy AdWords on my own name–if someone is already searching for me, they know who I am. For every BofA complaint, you can probably also find someone looking for a new bank (or complaining about WaMu, Citi, Wells Fargo): http://twitter.com/AliciaSkimbit/statuses/1265772120 http://twitter.com/AliciaSkimbit/statuses/1265772120 http://twitter.com/JoDuxbury/statuses/1252926236 http://twitter.com/JoDuxbury/statuses/1252926236 The business model may not look just like AdWords, but I definitely think it's there.