There were a couple of interesting announcements related to Twitter in the last couple of days, not including the funny little bug that was making its way around the Twitters a couple of days ago. While the bug provided insight into some of the issues and growing pains that Twitter needs to figure out there was some more interesting news that hit the Twittersphere. The first bit of news came from TechCrunch and it was about Ad.ly. Apparently Ad.ly, the Twitter in-stream spam ad network raised $5 million in funding and convinced Arnie Gullov-Singh to sign on as CEO. The second interesting tidbit came from Mashable and it revealed that some verified users were being invited to join the Twitter Business Center. Both of theses developments are seemingly independent but I have a feeling that they may lead to interesting confrontations in the future.
Will Twitter continue allow Ad.ly to operate in the open?
While Ad.ly just raised a bunch of money there are questions as to whether they have a long term sustainable business model. Right now Promoted Tweets just show up in Twitter search and are not competing with Ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets, or any other in-stream advertising platforms. You can be sure that Twitter will be moving towards in-stream Promoted Tweets and then the question about whether Ad.ly and other networks will be allowed to openly operate as they do now. I have a feeling that Twitter is going to want to own all of the inventory in their network. After all, you don’t see Google allowing other ad networks to include ads in the Google SERPs. I have a hard time believing that Twitter will allow free reign for competing ad networks. I have to question why anyone would drop $5 million on a platform that could be killed at any time by the network on which they are advertising unless there was an indication that they would be incorporated into Twitter. It would make sense for Twitter to buy Ad.ly and utilize their expertise and background into in-stream advertising. That’s really the only way the investment makes sense to me.
Twitter Business Center
Twitter Business Center is alo very interesting because it is the incorporation of Google Ad Words initial model into the Twitter system. Google grew on the backs of small businesses. They realized that they could compete with the biggest companies in the world by capturing attention via paid search at a relatively low cost. Obviously the costs have risen and all of the big brands dominate in Google now but the relative ease of opening a Google Ad Words account allows for new businesses to get the word out. While Twitter Business Center seems to be a closed beta for verified accounts I have a feeling that it will begin opening to a wide range of businesses soon and it would represent an excellent opportunity of small businesses to grow and for Twitter to really begin to monetize.
Questions Remain
There are still plenty of questions that remain. Will Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets continue to be allowed free reign to spam advertise on Twitter? Will Twitter Business Center open up to small business and anyone else who is interested? If so, when? Will Twitter begin to incorporate in-stream advertising and if they do will they buy the third party services like Ad.ly or start from scratch? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions but it will be interesting to watch how everything plays out. Just like it was watching Google evolve from a small search engine to the monolithic web advertising monster they have become.
Related posts:
Pingback: Did Twitter Just Create Their Version of Paid Links | My Resonance Score