Online ads have now invaded Twitter, as the millions of users will start seeing paid ads on their pages starting the evening of April 13. And just like what Google did with their advertising format, businesses can buy ads to appear in Twitter’s search results. Some brands that have opted to be the first advertisers are Starbucks, Best Buy, Red Bull, Sony Pictures and Virgin America.
Twitter held back on monetizing search results because they did not want to upset its tens of millions of users by flooding their Twitter pages with commercial messages.
"Stubborn insistence on a slow and thoughtful approach to monetisation — one which puts users first, amplifies existing value, and generates profit has frustrated some Twitter watchers," wrote Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, on a blog post introducing the service. He believes they’ve found a way to find the balance between attending to their users’ demands and their advertiser’s needs.
This is how it will work. Promoted Tweets will allow brands to place a short message at the top of the list of search results when users look for information about a particular product, company or news event. The ad will be persistent so that it is not lost in the deluge of Tweets, with only one ad on each page of search results. But if enough users do not interact with the Promoted Tweet by replying or retweeting it, the ad will disappear.
Let us monitor the next few days and see how this will affect both the users and the advertisers.
adobo. The Word in Advertising.
