Do you have 53 followers on Twitter? Shouldn’t you be making money off of them somehow, selling their attention to the highest bidder? Well, now you can with TwittAd. You list how many followers you have and for how much you are willing to sell an ad on your Twitter page, and TwittAd will match you with advertisers. Then the ad sits on the empty left-hand column of your Twitter page. The ads appear on any individual message page for standalone Tweets as well.
Something like this was bound to happen. If you’ve got an audience, no matter how small, advertisers will figure out a way to reach them. The ads themselves are actually not so bad, and relatively unobtrusive. At least TwittAd is not plastering the entire background with blaring ads—although, that would get my attention. Sort of a Nascar look. Robert Scoble could make a killing, except that his Twitter page is already plastered with ads of himself.
Selling space on your Twitter page obviously will bring more money the more followers you have. (TwittAd lets you set your own price, but market forces set a price per follower soon enough). We’ve already seen semi-famous Twitterers try to auction off their entire accounts. Keeping the account and selling the ad space makes more sense, because those followers are not going to stick around once they start getting Tweets from Pepsi.
The problem with placing ads on your Twitter page, though, is that ultimately you may just be advertising to yourself. I rarely go to the Twitter pages of people I follow. Their Tweets appear on my Twitter page (and my FriendFeed page, and my Thwirl client, and my Twinkle app on my iPhone). That’s why I follow people, so I can get their Tweets pushed to me. The only way ads are going to work on Twitter is if they are blended into the message stream and sent out as Tweets. But that would be annoying.
incredibly powerful. adwords 2.0.
It will be really tough to work this out successfully.I don’t think,it will really work out
dumbest business idea ever.
With all the “sweet” templates/ads – i’d call this “going Myspace”. Could be the mainstream breakthrough for Twitter.
So much for people not being able to figure out what to do with Twitter. Maybe this will help the naysayers buy into it.
I think the final paragraph of the post says it all. What a complete waste of time.
Not to mention the restrictions on ads inline with your tweets with a maximum character count of 140.
lot more can happen over Twitter, this seems to be just starting !, looks interesting idea !
This will kill twitter, eventually! I like it as an ad free space!
*Yaawn* !!
bad advertisement idea
As Vinay said: Yawn… this is underwhelming. I’d like Twitter to figure out monetization before its users get to monetize.
Uhh.. yer.. business plan draft 0.1
It’s going to be interesting to see who wants to advertise, who loses followers and who makes money at this.
Erick, thanks for the write up. You bring up very good points about advertising on twitter and the potential for ads in Tweets to become annoying. I tend to click on a user when they request to follow me just to see who they are and to look at their blogs or websites, so for me I would see the ads on a users background.
The entry level for advertisers to get some coverage on Twitter is very low with Twittad, and currently is the only way to make a mark on Twitter. It is my hope that as we move forward and partner with other sites that use the Twitter API, we can begin targeting ads based on demographics.
It is not Twittads goal to fill Twitter users pages with ugly and annoying ads, thats why we provide the templates and format for the ads. Ultimately the user has the ability to Deny a proposed ad, so it is up to the user if they want to take part in this ad platform.
Thanks-
James Eliason
President/CEO Twittad.com
For .12909012 cents per ad, I would prefer my Twitter to be clutter free.
deadpool
welcome money~
not so bad. from the followers point of fiew, in some cases twitterfeed isn´t anything else but advertising. so what..
This is a terrible idea – doesn’t it inherently abuse the “friend” relationship by shilling crap on them?
An Ad? For My Twitter? but how if i create 1 thousand fake follower???? O_O
People probably click on other pages more than they think. And when someone says they don’t click on backgrounds that’s speaking as of today. But Twitter will evolve just like every other social networking site and I imagine that evolution will take us to other pages more often. This model is trailblazing and for Twitter die hards these types of models will help Twitter stay current and not fade to dust for lack of ingenuity…
James Eliason does have a point. When I follow people back, I look at their web version after getting the email notice. I don’t do mass follows anymore due to the weird spammers. So being selective about who I follow back causes me to go to their web version.
But after that, all my tweets are viewed via a client like Twhirl or Tweetdeck or via iPhone client.
I do think the idea is funny and I have decided to run a small experiment with my own profile for a month since I am almost sure no one will notice them anyway (to use all the earnings – if any – for charities). It will be a fun one to do for myself at least and hope it will sure if the service can get any traction from the coverage on TechCrunch.
As for the ads themselves, I think they are mostly intended for branding purposes as they are not clickable – so interested advertisers should be better off buying them in bulk.
Mr.Obama could make a killing to ^^
The final paragraph sums up why TwitAds ain’t going to work: fewer people are visiting Twitter.com.
This is a beta version?
I hope this works well, I think the idea is fine. We get served ads on Google on every page we view, so why not in Twitter.
It is an interesting idea that I hope takes off.
Intrusion which my followers would not appreciate especially making money from their eyeballs…………. Deadpool
Eric,
The only time people go to a users profile page is when they are in the process of deciding who to follow (or try to see all that persons recent tweets). Users actual profile page are more of a branding play for that particular individual or business.
“that ultimately you may just be advertising to yourself” This is somewhat true.
Trying to monetize in this fashion is flawed. It is also worthy to note that not all ads will actually be viewable based upon screen resolutions, etc.
Rodney, points very well taken. That is the current state of Twitter that you are talking about with your point. Imagine a more developed Twitter with a more decorated profile page for users to enter links to their blogs, photos, etc. This will drive up traffic views on Profile pages and increase the value of a advertisement on their pages. In my opinion. Thanks. James
Sloppy looking site, no about page to verify the credentials of the company and it’s founders.
I agree, deadpool.
ya Welcome
I think they just found the business model for Twitter, which means they won’t be aroudn for that long if Twitter decides to throw some ads in that place.
tweet revolt! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/T69PGDfw9f_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”tweet revolt! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/J3RsZ4OMaa”}}}
Hey guys! Great video comment. I couldnt agree more, if ads start going into Tweets people will become annoyed with Twitter. That is why Twittad places ads on the background of a users profile page, not within the Tweets. If Twitter users dont want ads on the background then they dont sell their profile on Twittad. No revolt!
Cheers,
James Eliason
President/CEO Twittad.com
How come I’m not surprised that Twitter is making another stupid move? Oh wait, maybe it’s because they still haven’t fixed IM notification, cut off SMS updates for most of the world, shut down API access to most developers, etc. And now they hope to make money off pages *noone* visits.
More news about competitors of Twitter that don’t make clueless decisions would be more than welcome.
“Clueless” ? You mean like someone commenting about a 3rd party site that wants to place ads on twitter being interpreted a move from the company itself?
Sounds good . There is a new great start-up that just came out . It is all self serve and it is also fully automated . It supports all types text ads, banners and video ads.For publishers , it offers the highest split of earnings you can find out there and much more. It caters to web and mobile Publishers and Advertisers. Please check it out : http://www.webmob-ad.com.
A good portion of Twitter posts already tend to be ads of a kind, plug-in spam from people editing their “read mine!” blogs being an example.
Here’s a guess without imagining an evolution to the system. Near future advertising will use bundles of “fake” accounts to follow/get-follow such that they can then blast a few tinyurl REFs to mask links out to affiliated products and more.
Look, it’s Hitler complaining about Twitter, lolz – link goes to a Canadian pharmacy or zero-day exploit.
I can’t wait.
They’re come up with a great concept. It’s a money making opportunity for everybody.
but…. you can’t click the ads, can you?
I dont see a problem with pushing these ads through your message stream. If you are annoyed with any one user spamming too much you can always unfollow. In fact, I would welcome twitter doing this based on my interest. I get so many spammy twits, a few more wont make a difference especially if they are relevant.
I say, let Twitter do a Adsense for twits system where ads are shown based on the keywords in the last couple of messages I sent out.
BUYER BEWARE.
I read this, found it funny, headed over to TwittAd, and, even though I had no ad to run, bought some guy’s background image space for a month. Looked like a good deal to me. No real reason and I wasn’t even sure what to put there.
We chatted on Twitter with the person whose background space I bought, both bemused by the whole thing.
A day later, the twits at TwittAd told me they are canceling my ad buy because I didn’t upload the ad in 24 hours.
Get this? Not starting the month clock, which would be totally fair, but just canceling.
Oh, also. They won’t refund the credit card charge and pretend they don’t have my PayPal address that I provided on signup.
Avoid.
UPDATE: After posting here and on Twitter and sending them my email address again, I got a refund from TwittAd through PayPal.
Stanislav,
Good to find you on other blogs as well. We are currently doing some research to find out what a good time frame is for advertisers to upload a ad after purchasing. We may change this an enable a advertiser to tell us how much time they need for upload, 1-3 days. The whole idea is for advertisers to get the ad serving as fast as possible, and for Twitter users to start earning on that ad placement. Making a user wait for a month for ad placement is just not fair in our opinion.
Also, we will be introducing a few new things for advertisers including the option for Twittad to build the ad for the advertiser to simplify the process.
Regards,
James Eliason
President/CEO Twittad.com
Honestly, i was trying to avoid social network madness and twitter. But after reading this article, i am seriously thinking to open a twitter account…
after reading this article,I can say that this ads project is interesting one..
Funny how this company copied our name (added an extra “t”), and came up with logo elements very similar to ours.
Just do a whois on our domain and theirs to see who had the name first. The (bad) idea proves that it was just put together after seeing our stuff and then coming up with something to just “throw” out there first.
We prefer to take our time and come up with something worthwhile to add value to twitter and its users, rather than quickly turning something out.
Stay tuned for a REAL ad network for twitter…
Same here. I have not been using Twitter too. But I am changing my mind….
This is a great way to make additional income for web master.
Is there any probability of getting banned from twitter to putting such ads?
Is it permitted as per TOS of twitter.com ?
i am all up for the idea ,but this thing about providing any adsense code doesn’t work for me, i need to know specifics of the ad size units that i need to provide inorder to optimize my homepage!
very cool! now that i’m among the Twitterati, i’ll check out pimping my background
Great post, I will study and learn about it.As this time I’m busy doing article marketing and list building email.great post
doesn’t this kind of defeat the whole “social” aspect of Twitter. It’s just impressions all over again, like a friggin billboard.