TwittAd (@twittad) is a new service created by James Eliason (@jameseliason) that allows advertisers to pay Twitter users to promote a product, website or virtually anything else through an ad uploaded to their profile background.
There has been much speculation about when this type of monetization would happen. The ability has always been present for users to upload their own backgrounds, but the discussion was fueled even more by the Mashable post describing how to set up a custom Twitter background.
For the Users
The concept of the service seems to be simple enough:
- Post account for advertisers to purchase
- Select your duration and price
- Wait for advertiser to purchase
- Accept or deny the proposed ad
- If you accept, upload ad to the design section on your Twitter account
- Notify TwittAd that the ad has been placed
Once the ad has run its course for the time allotted, the user can take the ad down and be paid by the advertiser. TwittAd lets users cash out their account over PayPal once they hit a $20 balance.
If you’re willing to become a “sellout”, as some users may describe those who participate in the program, this looks to be a great system to orchestrate the process. You could do this all on your own, but TwittAd provides a framework, a way to check and manage the ads, and a reputation system.
For the Advertisers
- Look at the examples on how to build your advertisement
- Select “Buy Now” next to a Twitter user’s ad placement
- If the Twitter user accepts, pay TwittAd via PayPal
- If Twitter user removes your ad before your time expires, you will receive credit from TwittAd for the time your ad was not served
TwittAd doesn’t make any hard-lined guarantees, but their process does account for helping to cover advertisers in the event they get burned. Also, all money changing hands goes through a third-party, TwittAd, so companies don’t have to worry about paying individuals or getting tied up in issuing refunds.
Advertisers pay TwittAd a listing fee (minimum $0.99) plus a 5% service charge.
For the Community
There’s bound to be quite an uproar around this service from the community because many will feel as though “Corporate America” has invaded their space. However, if certain advertisers can connect with key audiences through an influencer on Twitter, why not offer them that opportunity.
For those that are worried about Twitter backgrounds becoming ‘MySpacey’, TwittAd has this to say:
Our goal is to not fill Twitter with ugly and obnoxious advertisements. We give advertisers templates and ideas to help keep the integrity of Twitter background images.
Wayne Sutton, well known in the microblogging community, had discussed this opportunity with his followers on Plurk shortly after the Mashable article went out, stating the following, “how to make money on your twitter background 1. extended bck. 2. display ad. 3. tweet 5 times a day for sponsor 4. charge $20 a week”. The 83 responses he received were mixed, some for and some against
Closing Thoughts
TwittAd has a sound concept and what appears to be a great model. The advertiser examples page has a few sample ideas and guidelines, but what they could really benefit from is a downloadable Photoshop template, making it quick and painless to create the ads.
As mentioned earlier, the opportunity for this type of advertising has existed since Twitter implemented custom background graphics, but now TwittAd provides a sleek, professional platform to make selling your ad space even easier.
We’ll keep an eye on TwittAd and those selling their background space to see what kind of impact this has. You can follow @TwittAd on Twitter or on their company blog.
Rob is one of the founders of Microblink. His interests include how people are using microblogs and the community growing around them.
Mike writes and edits for Microblink day-in and day-out. He is known as the marketing guy and handles most of the microblogging accounts.
Mark writes development-oriented posts as well as news items. He's not afraid to dive headfirst into technical topics for the sake of the team.
Hmmm. I don’t see how this is a “great model”.
Advertisers like to see a measurement of how well their ads are doing. With a profile background, there is no CPM. You have no idea how many times that ad has been viewed. Even if you COULD find out how many times a profile page has been viewed, it’s nothing more than a profile page. The bulk of Twitter’s interactivity and attention is on the home page. Very few people visit other profile pages unless they have to.
A static background offers no interactivity. It’s extremely difficult to turn a viewer into a consumer if you can’t click on a link. Most people will not bother to type in an address just to visit an ad’s website.
Some ads may be too large, and the tweet section could cover part of the ad, such as the case here: http://twitter.com/juliedeeds I can’t see part of the ad, the part that contains the Twitter account, unless I expand my screen further.
All in all, I don’t think this is the best business model for Twitter.
@Nathaniel Payne, as a content provider I think this is great and as the company providing the ads I think this model ranks somewhere from so so to good. And truthfully at the extremely low cost of entrance this can be great. The reasonings you listed are all very valid but in my mind seem minor and can be worked around.
On a side note, I have shared my thoughts with Mike and I think the model does need to be tweaked and the market refocused. Perhaps I’ll post my thoughts on what I would have liked to have seen in the near future. Your feedback is greatly appreciated as it has already fueled future post ideas.
Nathaniel,
Thank-you for your feedback on the model. Just as a little background on the idea, the initial step for making a move into advertising on Twitter evolves around the purchasing, or promotion, of Twitter users. This could be promoting a business on a users background or promotion of a specific product.
I think your point of advertisers not being able to track the effectiveness of ad placement through Twittad is a very valid point. HTML background images are not available on Twitter, so we are not able to produce clickable backgrounds through Twittad. It is our hope that Twitter will move to a HTML format so we can work with them in building a effective ad platform.
There are some things that we are working on with regards to this, as well as finding a way to fill Twitter users into a category like what Twellow has done, then allowing advertisers to find a specific category that would fit with their product or business for background purchase.
Of the two obvious advertising models for Twitter (ads through Tweets, or background ads) the use of background ads ensures the integrity of what Twitter is all about. The purchase of Summize will be a major play for Twitter, but not a revenue share model with their users like what Twittad has built.
Based on how many people we have had sign up for Twittad.com (both in the US and overseas) there are Twitter users that are interested in this model.
How do you deliver ads to users who use AIR clients/don’t use twitter.com?
@Paulo: With the model TwittAd is using, they won’t be able to serve ads to users on Twitter by way of AIR clients. This system depends entirely on people using the web interface. However, according to our post on Tracking Twitter’s third party popularity (available at http://microblink.com/2008/08/21/tracking-twitters-third-party-popularity/), you’ll notice that the Twitter web interface still drives 45% of all tweets being published.
As others have pointed out, its not a perfect model, being that users don’t have links they can click on to go off-site and advertisers don’t have any direct metrics to track, but it is an interesting take on the monetization of Twitter.
The really interesting part will be to see how the Twitter and microblogging community reacts to this idea and what kind of staying power it creates.