Why I think Twitter’s new advertising model is great

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Twitter’s new advertising model has been both highly anticipated and feared for years now.  What would the company bring to market that would generate revenue but not disrupt the value of the communication medium?  Well we now have their answer: Promoted Tweets.  And while it doesn’t seem that tricky of a concept, Promoted Tweets is a well thought out ad model that, if executed as expected, will serve to increase the value of and expectations for advertising moving forward.  Here’s why:

Promoted Tweets are promoted content, not promoted ads
Ad tweets aren’t separate ad content, they are regular tweets that appear in an advertiser’s actual Twitter stream.  That means they need to provided value to a brand’s regular followers, not just new recruits.  If brands don’t respect that, they will lose the followers they’re recruiting by spamming them.

Promoted Tweets are promoted or demoted based on the value they deliver to consumers
Twitter’s new “resonance” score judges  Promoted Tweets based on how users interact with them.  That means if PT’s are getting RT’d, favorited, clicked on, or @replied then the PT’s will stay highly visible.  If users aren’t engaging, the Promoted Tweet will dissapear with the Normal tweet stream.  The resonance score will force advertisers to really think about what content they pay to promote, and to provide real value, otherwise it will again be a waste of money.

Promoted Tweets are tied to intent not eyeballs
Since at least Twitter’s first evolution of Promoted Tweets is tied to search, the ad content will only appear when a user is looking for related information.  Between search inciting relevancy and the pressure as illustrated above on the ad content being highly valuable from to users / followers, I expect the Promoted Tweets to deliver a positive ad experience.  One that, if done correctly, could change user expectations and demand for advertising content across the board.

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