Twitter have unveiled their plans on monetizing their social networking site. Called “Promoted Tweets”, initially they will include advertising within search results and on the Twitter website, and later ads will appear in the ‘feed’ to 3rd party applications such as an iPhone or desktop Twitter client.
Until now Twitter has provided a free service to their 75 Million users. There has been huge speculation on which advertising model the service would adopt.
Assuming that Twitter deliver targeted, relevant and unobtrusive advertising (As I write this I’ve just been served an Evernote Advert by Google Chrome opening up a new tab? WTF? I didn’t sign up for that.), I’m not convinced that end users will provide enough click through to satisfy advertisers.
Anyone who pays for online advertising will know that return on investment is crucial. If the occassional advert doesn’t deliver for advertisers (most of us scan through our tweets and only click through what interests, wouldn’t you agree?), Twitter will be under tremendous pressure to increase the volume or scope of the advertising. If they don’t they could face the prospect of a fall in their new revenue.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out what will happen if this is the case. Business is business, revenue will come first, and for me that will make the user experience worse. I agree with the arguement that in some cases advertising can help fund development and actually improve the user experience in the long term, but I just don’t buy this with Twitter. The mechanisms are simple and present already, and if the content isn’t desirable, we simply unfollow that user. Will Twitter let you ‘unfollow’ ads? Yeah, right.
Biz Stone did say:
He also offers a glimpse at the way these tweets may look;
Anyone who’s used the ad-supported free Tweetie on Mac will be used to this style of delivery. Whilst I found them fairly unobtrusive I didn’t click on one single advert in the five months I used the app (I now used the paid version – no ads).
On paper Twitter is estimated to be worth $1 Billion but as a business it has yet to make any income at all. They have to monetize somehow.
My suggestion? All I’ll say is this: I like Twitter. So much so that I’d happily pay a small fee for a monthly subscription without annoying adverts. It’s a service I want to use. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Just not with ads please.
So come on Biz, if you’re going to force adverts on us, where and when can I sign up for ad-free Twitter?
Sorry for the title – I couldn’t resist.
iMad – iPad. Twitter – Shitter. I’m looking forward to see what rhyme you will use for your next post…
There is no way Twitter will be able to convince people to pay for an ad-free version before they have annoying ads to be free of.
Personally I welcome promoted tweets.
Twitter said at @chirp this week that everyone was saying these promoted tweets are ‘adverts’ and they aren’t. That just confuses me. For the sake of my comments, let just say these promoted tweets are ‘adverts’.
Personally I’d welcome these adverts in my timeline.
Because I do online advertising I might be a bit biased, but here’s my thinking of why I think they would be a positive thing:
- I really like decent contextual ads. If an advertiser knows I’m in Aberdeen and wants to tell me that, say, O’Neils aberdeen has a promotion on… I’m fine with that.
- You’re probably like me, in that you very very rarely click on an advert. What Twitter are doing isnt aimed at us geeks. It’s aimed at the 90% of normals who will click on adverts. Like all other internet advertising we’ll just ignore it.
- A couple of times recently I’ve seen good contextual ads in my gmail account and clicked on them… I’m rewarding both Google and the advertiser by hitting the nail on the head of exactly what I would be interested in… not something radio or tv adverts have ever done for me.
- I want twitter to be here in 12 months, and they just don’t have any income. I’ve been using Twitter for 3 years completely free, if they want to bring in some revenue at last I dont have a problem with that. I think 99% of the internet will be free but ad-supported eventually.
Of course, I’ll eat my words if it become annoying advertising.
I think that Twitter and all that surround them are so forward thinking that they have a great opportunity to make another giant leap forward in the world of advertising… and, like google have, allow very niche, very local advertisers to compete with the big boys.
I think that you wouldn’t mind the ads at all if they got them right as well TBH Ray.