Twitter is experimenting with new advertising options that would put ads in a user’s timeline when looking at other tweets. The new promotion option may upset some users but advertisers are keen on getting their foot in the door of 300 million users.
What The Ads Will Be
Ads have always been the bane of the internet for most users and while companies have experimented with making them relevant again, some concepts have outright flopped. Twitter’s idea of the ad is placing them in your timeline view of other users.
“We’ve been talking about Promoted Tweets in the timeline since we launched Promoted Tweets …” Twitter’s Sean Garret tells me. “We have and will continue to take a measured and thoughtful approach to how we may display them.”
While talks of promoted Tweets and timeline ads have been common for some time, Twitter is now beginning to implement them which will start appearing over the next few months but users may not like the new ads:
“In terms of deals, Twitter has tried that route before and it did not go well. @EarlyBird sputtered out almost as soon as it got off the ground. One of the problems with @EarlyBird is that it was not targeted well enough to users who actually cared about the deals.”
Why Promoted Tweets Are Hot
Twitter is starting to get more commercial and it’s a move encouraged by advertisers and internal staff alike. As of now, Twitter’s advertising options are becoming more attractive to celebrities and the reach many users have hasn’t been overlooked.
Love him or hate him, Charlie Sheen proved Twitter’s advertising prowess recently with an endorsement for Internships.com which was valued at $100,000:
“The dust has finally settled on the Sheen media hurricane from the past couple of weeks and bloggers have pretty much moved on in expectation of the next easy content fustercluck. Internships.com however, who paid at least 100K for the Ad.ly campaign (in the guise of a social media intern job post), is reaping the benefits of the two Sheen tweets, and have revealed their related traffic totals to TechCrunch in the wake of the blitz.”
