Yesterday, Twitter finally gave us all an idea of how they intend to generate revenue: Promoted Tweets. While the social media darling had already made deals to license the its data stream to the likes of Google, Yahoo! and MSN, it appears that Promoted Tweets will enable businesses to insert themselves into the conversation stream.
Twitter is still figuring out all the details, but initially Promoted Tweets will appear when a user searches for a particular keyphrase and resemble “sticky posts” on a blog – appearing at the top of the search result. This gives advertisers a couple advantages:
The payment system for Promoted Tweets is also a work in progress. To start, advertisers will pay on a CPM basis (Cost Per Thousand of Viewed Tweets), but once Twitter gets a handle on how users interact with the advertisements it will determine other ways in which to charge advertisers. In addition, Twitter will track the performance of each Promoted Tweet; those performing poorly will be removed without charge to the advertiser.
Once Twitter cuts its teeth on Promoted Tweets for searches, advertisements should show up in individual user streams. The trick will be how to determine relevancy; some methods might include: tweet topics, geography and even the interests of followers. It should be interesting to see how this process shakes out… Surely there will be some pain, but hopefully Twitter will be able to handle this hot potato.
Bill Rowland
How are you using Social Media Today?
Copyright Dinkum Interactive 2009-2012. All Rights Reserved.
February 8, 2012. Posted under: Blog.
In the past two weeks, I attended two conferences that were world’s apart but linked. One was focused on large, profitable companies. The other involved nonprofits. They both discussed social media. The first conference featured CEOs, many of whom are grappling with the use of social media within their organizations. Each CEO had a bit of a different take on
Twitter has really gained a good place in the industry in very few months. The advertising they have started recently has benefited many of the advertisers. The traffic they have achieved is really appreciable.