Twitter has apparently come across the Holy Grail of advertising, and it’s coming soon. Today during his interview at the RealTime CrunchUp, Twitter COO Dick Costolo told the audience a bit about the company’s upcoming advertising business. Costolo was vague on the details, but he did make some promises: “It will be fascinating. Non-traditional. And people will love it… It’s going to be really cool.”
Costolo didn’t divulge many more details, though he did mention that it wouldn’t be tied into the site’s retweet feature. When TC editor Michael Arrington tried to clarify by asking if the ads would be integrated into the Tweet stream, Costolo said that “he didn’t say the ads would be mixed in with tweets”. But he didn’t say they wouldn’t, either.
Costolo closed out the topic by saying that the message he wants to send is that “Twitter will have an advertising business, ready in the near future, and available to partners.”
About time! I’m sure it’s going to be pretty good because they have been trying to tackle this monetizing issue for quite some time now…
I look forward to seeing what they roll out with and testing it out!
James F.
Owner, TwitterBackground.com
Except referrals from Twitter are next to useless. They do not convert. Twitter is a “downtime” place. People don’t shop there, they’re just killing time.
There’s no intent with that click from a Twitter link like you get with search (where someone’s actually searching and shopping). A click from Twitter is a “curious click”. I know, because I’ve tried it out over several verticals. One site I get has around 300-400 uniques from Twitter and it doesn’t convert. I’d rather have 10% of that traffic from a search engine.
Sure you can search in Twitter but search there is uselessly full of spam since there’s no algorithm to weed out the chaff from the wheat like search engines have.
It will be interesting to see how they get around the issue of lack of intent on Twitter.
There is a massive difference in quality between traffic from a search engine and traffic from Twitter.
I completely agree with you.
The action on Google has a clear intent, either transactional, informational or navigational. It has definitive action.
The action on Twitter is mere recording of a thought (not an intent) or reiteration of the same thought. The thoughts do not convert, for sure.
Bottom Line: Twitter is a fad. I am waiting!
Advertising! Well, it’s past due. LBS competition is also high on its heels….
twtads anyone…
Yeah, tell me twitter what I should love… before telling me what I should buy.
The way they will make money is called “SuperTweet.” Here, I talk with the founder of Likaholix about what a SuperTweet is, and how Twitter could make advertising that people love here: http://www.kyte.tv/ch/6118-scobleizer/620144-supertweet-future-of-advertising
I just wrote more about SuperTweets: http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/20/twitter-to-turn-on-advertising-you-will-love-heres-how-supertweet/ and how Twitter’s ad model could bring us ads we love.
Thanks for sharing man. Enjoyed the vid and look forward to seeing what’s going on at Twitter. Should be pretty exciting and I’m sure they will do better than Myspace or Facebook!
Scob, at 5.20 – “Retweet your Tit…”
LOL
That’s funny. You just couldn’t resist Eh!
Follow all the real-time action with our special CrunchUp tweet tracker:
http://tweetzi.com/crunchup/%2523crunchup
Hit the ‘PLAY’ button for a continous stream of updates. Enjoy!
maybe the ads will also change in real time. anyway, what good is advertising if the service is not growing
We are all anxiously waiting for the plan. It’s about time Twitter finds a way to monetize its traffic. All this hype and potential will go to waste if they fail. Facebook is making money.
This is all well and good but wondering why there is a lack of coverage on Twitter about to be launching business/commercial account offerings? Do you think they will be announcing this when they announce advertising offerings? I’m also curious whom Twitter decided on for their handling their analytics! Biz has some teasers on this towards end of this article, skip to the part where Biz says, “One of the first things we are going to do explicitly is commercial accounts,” he said.” http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1789332/twitter_newspapers_should_be_radically_open/
Will be fascinated to see:
1) Will the ads be served on twitter.com only, or as Tweets via the API?
2) How many people will be turned off by seeing ads? Remember the initial backlash against Gmail’s context-sensitive ads?
“2) Remember the initial backlash against Gmail’s context-sensitive ads? ”
But from what I see – it is now happening and it definitely works.
that´s good news, looking forward to it. real time ads on life streams why not!
ok.. show me first how it looks and i will tell you if i like it or not
No offense, but Twitter’s a joke. The amount of spam and junk on here really makes it hard to justify the valuation. And, ad model or not, Twitter is losing users. I’ve heard others spin this by saying most users are now using mobile devices instead of going to the web site to justify the drop. However, that doesn’t account for the huge churn rate, and you can’t honestly believe that many users have switched completely to tweeting on their phone. Don’t get me started on the number of followers which seems to be the measurement of worth for twitter users. That stat means nothing anymore with all the junk “follow me” requests.
+ 1
+ The World
When twitter starts to generate revenue, we’ll see how valuable the service is…The current billion valuation will go down the toilet. Flush
Well, that is the reason why Facebook and Twitter prefer not the release their business model. Ride the hype as long as you can.
They don’t know if their business model will work or not. They don’t know whether their company will be profitable or not. But at this point who cares, right. They have already sucked in millions in VC money. If users start dropping like flies, who cares.
Now regarding Twitter ad model. It is nothing new again. I am not a twitter hater, I have been using Twitter since they started but I have also noticed the drop in engagement on twitter. The ad model is nothing new and will not make too much difference. Facebook tried doing the same thing but did not make significant run.
Twitter need to add a whole new product to make money. In the current state, there is nothing they can do.
Interesting. Also, most paying customers start off as paying customers. Twitter has a lot of users on the “free plan” and none paying. They stand to loose a lot of users, regardless of the method of monetization. Choosing one (ads) that probably (to be determined, of course) provides little value to most users, would not have been at the top of my list.
+ www
good content is STILL the king.. imo twitter is not a good provider of contents. if i need a guide how to change oil i just google it and returns tons results with details info and that’s we I really NEED
“No offense, but Twitter’s a joke. The amount of spam and junk on here really makes it hard to justify the valuation. And, ad model or not, Twitter is losing users. I’ve heard others spin this by saying most users are now using mobile devices instead of going to the web site to justify the drop”
Twitter is just one big bubble. Like a lot of other places it will be crowded of spammers and marketers. And you must be pretty stupid if you’re still willing to follow them. It was a hype that is now getting exploited. It’s simple as that!
How do you know if its the ‘Holy Grail of Advertising’ if you havent even seen it or have one bit of information about it?
Just because they announce that they will launch a revenue model you label it the Holy Grail of Advertising?
Great investigative journalism…oh wait…yea, its TechCrunch
+1
If the advertising IS tied to the new retweet feature I won’t see it much. I tend to opt out of retweet on most of my follows.
This sounds like one of the ideas we discussed in our podcast a few weeks back. We talked about Twitter monetizing from sponsored tweets!
Hopefully, this doesn’t get too spammy… users may have a different definition of “cool” than Twitter COO does.
Advertising that people love? Like “The Most Interesting Man in the World”?
I’m really curious to see how will Twitter pull it off. Like it or not, Twitter is huge, but let’s just see how much money it can generate. Should be interesting to watch.
Yes. People love advertising. Absolutely adore it. They think its awesome when they find that someone has found a new way to slip an advertisement into their experience with a product, in public, or while theyre trying to focus. People really just use websites for all the creative ways people try to get their attention with ads. They love it, because they really just dont get enough.
Users/Consumers tolerate advertising, Dick. They dont love it, no matter how “innovative” it is. Just be real and say youve found a way to introduce advertising in a wayy that wont bother users, and make ad partners happy.
Im not arguing that advertising doesnt have a role in supporting/generating revenue… but lets be real here, if websites or television suddenly had no ads, people wouldnt *miss* them.
This is exactly what I thought while reading. I’m surprised it took this many comments before someone pointed it out.
Really?! “Love it?!” WTF Who the hell “loves” advertising. Maybe ‘ok’ with it, as it serves to perpetuate information on the web.
Check out http://RantRoll.com – a natural evolution of what Twitter SHOULD be. Add pics, links as thumbnails, and even embed video. No ad model yet, but much more engaging experience.
If this delivers like they are hyping it up to Twitter will become the absolute bedrock of the social networking industry. That’s just my opinion of course.
Twitter has to be the most idiotic boring time waster bubble 2.0 has brought us. Can someone explain to me why would want to read about the mundane details of other people daily lives?
I tried it for a month and followed a few people. But I just don’t understand why anyone cares to read about the day to day comings and goings of others and why anyone would think that other people would want to read about their own daily activities.
Call me a nut if you must but I’m afraid I don’t like any advertising and continuallyl do my best to avoid\ignore all advertising regardless of the delivery mechanism.
Agree. Who has time to follow the minute details of someone else’s life? Twitter is just “boredcast IM”…ah, “broadcast IM”. I have only logged in less than 10 times in 1.5 years.
You’re just pointing to the elephant in the living room, which all the “new media” types are denying exists: Twitter is useless for business, it’s for the inane who have no imagination but to “chat” aimlessly.
But these days I find if you state the obvious, you’re seen as “nuts”. We live in a funny world.
What they should do is provide an ad platform where 3rd party twitter client developers partner with Twitter for in-app advertising, similar to Admob, but targeted similar to FB ads. This is compatible with their focus on 3rd party apps as a distribution platform, instead of building a FB-style walled garden. You throw in geolocation, and you have the potential for targeted and localized ads. This form protects the feed, and incentivizes all of the stakeholders.
Why do people feel the need to talk up a product, instead of showing it. If it is so good, show it. Otherwise, I have to assume it’s not ready, in which case, how can it be so great?
+1.
Twitter has been doing this all the time. 100% hype, zero delivery.
Since when is advertising ‘cool’, when someone says that you can be sure things are going to deteriorate pretty rapidly, advertising is an interruption, the price we pay for more interesting things.
Twitter is good for broadcast, definitely use cases there, so its definitely gong to make money but the chatter we see currently cannot be monetized imho, and is probably useless.
VOICE TWEETS? I think Twitter is a waste of time. So, if you want to use Twitter, how can you reduce the amount of time it wastes? I don’t have a smart phone (yet), but is there a way to send tweets through voice commands? This would enable Twitter to be even more of a stream-of-conscience messaging system.
What? Get reward points for tweeting about your favorite brands? Or get some kind of prize for tweeting the most about some product you like?
That sounds like feed spam to me, doesn’t it? Incentivizing people to post crap about product contributes to the noise, but its bound to happen as Twitter’s investors salivate for the payday.
In which case Twitter will become the Mechanical Turk of advertising with drones waffling on about some product or another and nobody listening. 6 months later and a tiny conversion rate for advertisers, Twitter will wither on the vine.
I wonder if it will be annoying. I’m not a fan of intrusive ads.
Rest assured, it will be annoying. Where exactly do you think they have room for ads?
They’ve got to be thinking about doing something that shows up in the stream…otherwise they are missing out on a big piece of their value.
I like the idea of a tweet in the stream marked “sponsored” and let advertisers by into individual streams. E.g. how much would you pay to have a tweet in Ashton’s stream that promoted your product but that was marked as ad
Exactly how does an advertisement add value for users of Twitter? It’s clear with Google and Bing. With Twitter, I don’t see it. I think ads is the wrong model as people are not going to Twitter to find stuff.
We have a winner! Search engines are where people go to shop. Twitter is a “downtime” place. There’s no quality on Twitter. Google have an algorithm and 11 years experience in ranking and deindexing spam. Twitter is amateur hour when it comes to indexing and ranking (ranking by “newness”, deindexing nothing).
Hello Jason, I agree with Scoble that advetising will be based on metadata and think that, as well as enabling the tweeter to be targeted, the model will allow advertisements to be targeted to the people who are may be interested in the content of the tweet. I talk about how this could be done in this article: http://bit.ly/7pghaY
Possible, sure. Useful, now that I question. It comes down to the mindset of a visitor. With search engines, the mindset is to find something. With a real-time communications stream, I don’t see that being the case. Therefore, I don’t see the value of ads to users.