Twitter Will Begin to Advertise With “Promoted Tweets”
There comes a time in the life of every business when a difficult reality must be faced: value optimization cannot continue indefinitely when the underlying business model fails to generate sufficient profit. Twitter’s most recent announcement, that it intends to integrate advertisements through Promoted Tweets, is therefore the long-expected, highly anticipated (and somewhat feared) step towards diminishing the disparity between operating costs and profit.
Unsurprisingly, the news has been met with a firestorm of opinions. But before we get to that, let’s cover the changes.
In short, a number of advertisers (currently Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks and Virgin America) will bid on product-related keywords, which when searched will appear at the top of user results. Search for trends in coffee, get a Starbucks tweet; for digital cameras, a Best Buy. Simple, no?
And in most respects, Promoted Tweets will function as do normal ones: users will be able to retweet, reply, or bookmark what they find interesting. However, Promoted Tweets will constantly be monitored for effectiveness, meaning that tweets failing to incite interest (as judged by user propensity to interact) will be removed from search results. To combat inundating users, only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed per page.
Reluctant to commit to a more all-encompassing plan, co-founder Biz Stone stated that more changes will be considered only after they have had sufficient time to measure the success of the Promoted Tweets program. At that point, Promoted Tweets may move to third-party applications like Tweetdeck.
In response to criticism, Stone has stressed the fact that Promoted Tweets will seamlessly integrate into the existing Twitter platform, going as far as to mention that there is “not a single ad… that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter”. Proponents of the change focus on Twitter’s dire need to turn a profit, and Stone’s decision to integrate ads in a somewhat unobtrusive manner. However, user response has not been favorable. Complaints highlighting Myspace’s ad-related demise and the unsolicited presence of spam-like notices are the most prevalent, with some users already anticipating being driven from Twitter by exorbitant ad presence.
The most fundamental question making the rounds, however, is one we can’t yet answer: why are sponsored ads needed when advertisers already interact with users through their corporate Twitter accounts? One possible reason may be indicative of the advertisers’ strategies: Promoted Tweets effectively function as a wide net, drawing larger numbers to corporate accounts, where more personalized interaction can take place.
Whatever the reason, one thing remains clear: if users don’t approve of the changes, serious problems could be in store.
[Courtesty of PCMag and PCWorld]
