In an effort to “optimize value before profit,” co-founder Biz Stone has explained, Twitter has intentionally kept the traditional web advertising model at arm’s length. But yesterday the micro blog FINALLY announced its new ad platform: Promoted Tweets. As we await the release of additional details scheduled for later this week, we do know that user searches will trigger these ads to appear at the top of that users timeline as a traditional Tweet. Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America will be among the first to launch campaigns.
Interestingly, the lives of these Sponsored Tweets are reliant on user engagement in a whole new way. “If users don’t respond …by re-tweeting, favoriting, or replying… [the ads] will be pulled from the search results,” PC World reports, adding that “only one promoted tweet will be displayed per search results page.” This almost puts one in the mind of how Google rewards PPC and organic search results with PageRank and Quality Score based on relevancy and activity. Biz Stone insists that these Promoted Tweets should be useful to users, not burdensome and disruptive and some have noted that the limited screen real estate could make for very expensive ads.
Comparisons to Twitters new platform have been to that of radio ads: you’re “listening” to the conversations of your friends (and pundits you may follow) and BOOM! Virgin America chimes in with their two cents. Then more chatter from friends and pundits, seemingly uninterrupted. The difference here is that, unlike radio ads, Twitter ads are more present (read, persistent) and will contain links – way more effective than radio ads. It’s true that these ads will be easy to ignore but in considering Twitters unprecedented engagement and interactivity users will end up reading them because they are so ingrained in the experience. Promoted Tweets may even be confused with “regular” tweets as “not a single ‘ad’ in our Promoted Tweets platform isn’t already an organic part of Twitter,” says Stone. “This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising.” Promoted Tweets will also appear organically in the timelines of those who already follow a particular brand. See below for our first look at a Promoted Tweet!
