Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Sponsored Tweets - Is it the end for it?

Since the last year several companies took advantage of Twitter's ad-less service and introduced their service to advertisers and publisher (members of twitter). It seemed to be a prosperous business for everyone who jumped on the bandwagon - publisher, advertisers and the companies who handled the transactions - be it Ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets, MyLikes, Magpie, Revtwt, Twivert, Twittad, Paymetweets and many more.

Some of the mentioned services pay you
  • a fixed price for each tweet, no matter how many clicks your tweet received (Sponsored Tweets has ClickWatch enabled which means, if the target of 1,50 $/click is not reached, the tweet will be sent out 24 hours later again),
other services pay you
  • for each click the given link received,
  • for each follower that views your tweet
  • or for each sale a user that your given link generates.
In the last months Twitter officials already announced that they themselves want to introduce advertisement in Twitter. In the last few days more details got into the light that Twitter will offer its own ad platform.

It's not that clear yet how it will work out as they are just in the Beta phase but it seems like the ads will be published in your tweet depending on what you tweet (keywords & #hashtags).
A Twitter official told on a press conference that it will be explicit clear that a sponsor paid for the ad and it will be made relevant and useful, so the user doesn't think of an ad!

With 50 million tweets per day, around 600 tweets per second, it's a big opportunity for Twitter to start earning money instead of losing money. But it seems like Twitter will allow users to opt-out of Ads in their own twitter time line for a small fee.

In the end it all depends if the users of Twitter accept the "paid ads" or if many will leave Twitter as soon as they discover ads in their time line (depending for which company). Not sure if this will also lead to a kind of "click fraud" as the users may not know for which company the shown ad will be, if the user can delete this ad like any other tweet you have sent out to your follower and if the pricing of Twitter's own ad platform might be competitive with the ones who are already in the market.

If you think of Kim Kardashian who seems to charge 10.000 $, Holly Madison which charges 1.250 $ or Shoemoney who gets 176+$ for a Sponsored Tweet, they will opt out of this service but it seems that Twitter has to look themselves in which user account they can place the appropriate ad not only depending on keywords and Hashtags but also followers and the activity of these followers (click-through rate).

What do you think?
  • will you stop using Twitter when they built ads into your twitter stream?
  • will you pay a small fee to get rid of Twitter's own ads?
  • will it affect your use of sponsored Tweets in the future?

8 comments:

  1. Being a somewhat irregular tweeter (who already provides a few sponsored tweets) I can't see it affecting me. It's about time somebody at the top figured out how to monetize twitter!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not a big fan of advertising in timelines. I tried Magpie once but didn't allow any of the ads. They all looked spammy.

    I kept the account just in case anyone signed up with the referral link, but had to delete it when Magpie tried to dictate what I am / am not allowed to tweet in my own personal tweets!

    If I don't like the changes twitter makes, I'll just stop using it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm not very keen on Twitter at the best of times. Ads are likely to drive me away completely, but I'll wait until I see them before deciding.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I signed up with ad.ly quite a few months ago but I have not been given a sponsor yet. I'm am almost to the point that I might drop my membership with them.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I do think Twitter will make it very difficult for these third party companies to compete. It will very interesting to see this all go down.

    I am fine with Twitter trying to make some money, it has to happen at some time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I never had a single offer at sponsored tweets. I have try other methods like twitter PPC. But eventually stopped it becasue it is somewhat blackhat hehehe. Love the blackhat methods.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I finally made the $50 payout on Sponsored Tweets, just recently. It took forever. I have tried some of the others too and have not even reached the payout - not even close. If Twitter themselves gets ads - I'd be willing to give it a try.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I am reaching payout from SponsoredTweets, it is quite challenging. :D , it seems that there are no opportunities to make money with Twitter themselves, they are utilizing twitter search.

    ReplyDelete

Blog Widget by LinkWithin