We all knew if was coming, and today – April 13th, 2010 marks the date at which Twitter will begin to cash in, dollars for placement…
You can read the announcement on their blog, tell me you don’t get the sense that the tone of this post sounds like a child ashamed at doing something bad and now telling his parents about it?Â
Basically it comes down to this…
1. Twitter will take money from a top-tier list of companies (Best Buy, Starbucks, Sony Pictures, Red Bull, etc…) that will present their ads first when a Twitter search is performed. They don’t say if this will be keyword generated (assume it will be).Â
2. They have chosen to only roll this out to a few top advertisers and to only present the ads within Twitter search (not partner searches which is most of the traffic today) though they did say a future step could very well be presenting the ads to their partner ecosystem as well through their API
3. Interesting – they claim to take into account user feedback with which ads get shown more often, which seems to indicate a pay-per-click model. In other words, if a user favorites or Re-tweets an ad, it will get shown more often.Â
All in all…not such a bad approach for Twitter and they know they must be smart about this to not alienate its user base. No doubt, some will leave (there is evidence that growth was already slowing on Twitter) .Â
What do you think the outcome will be of Twitter entering advertising?
