So at long last and after much lustful speculation, Twitter is set to launch an ad platform. Trick is, Twitter advertising won't appear in your tweet stream -- the paid messages will only pop up when you go over to search.twitter.com to see what the world is talking about (or search inside Twitter via various other doorways).
This shows remarkable restraint, perhaps signaling Twitter realizes ads -- even if clearly marked with something such as IZEA's sponsored tweet #ad hashtag -- annoy the devil out of people when they're chatting inside social media. So rather than risk upsetting the masses, which could drive away the audience that MySpace and Friendster found so fickle, Twitter will keep interruptions away from your clever 140-character missives unless someone else is specifically hunting for your topic.
What could it mean?
1. Twitter could be using the search ecosystem as a test, to see how people respond, before expanding the ads into the main chat streams.
2. Twitter may bet its search functionality will scale and someday rival Google (although only 429,500 U.S. people visit its search page per month as of now).
3. Or perhaps Twitter is simply acknowledging that ads work best when a consumer is in a search modality instead of a social mode.
We're betting test; in marketing, as in love, it's hard to make restraint last forever.
Image: H. Koppdelaney
2 comments:
I actually love this move by Twitter.
Then again I'm also a fan of Sting.
The search screen is the most likely place where someone will actually click. However, do we know if the third party apps will be pulling in ads as well?
One would think they would have to...?
I think 3rd-party apps would have to. Honestly this is a very elegant move by Twitter -- they'll make money, build business interest in search, and avoid annoying core users in their active streams. Quiet clever.
Will be interesting to see if this move builds demand for real-time search, and if that evolves into a marketplace to compete with Google.
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