Does TweetSense make sense? And more importantly would it make cents?
Twits have been up in arms with the introduction of Twitter based ad networks like twitAD and Magpie. Magpie in particular drew a lot of coverage with notables like Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins at Mashable and Michael Arrington at TechCrunch weighing in on the topic. Many claimed that it was outright spam that had no place on Twitter. Lots of huffing and stamping of feet. They’d unfollow anyone they saw using such a service!
I’m not opposed to this type of monetization if it’s implemented well.
The fact is, are you really going to notice? If you’re that attached to Twitter you probably use the service quite a bit. You follow a lot of people. Many are very active. The odds that you’re going to see an advertising tweet are quite low and if you did it would be gone from your existence in a matter of minutes.
Advertising tweets would be very ephemeral.
So, that begs the question: will these Twitter based ad networks be effective? Will people click on them enough to make it a viable advertising platform? They will if it’s done right.
Spare me the ‘nobody clicks on those things’ type of indignation. There’s this company called Google. They have these products called AdWords and AdSense. Both seem to be doing just fine even though many say they’ve never clicked on either type of ad unit.
The implementation will be paramount. They’ll fail if the ads become too frequent, overwhelming tweet streams for users. Essentially, if the noise drowns out the signal, it will fail. They’ll also fail if the ad content isn’t relevant. Viagra ad tweets mixed in with a discussion about Motrin Moms isn’t going fly.
The frequency and context of advertising tweets are critical to the success of this type of ad network. So, who is in the best position to pull this off?
Twitter!
Twitter knows your tweet velocity. Twitter has the ability to create dynamic tags for users based on keyword frequency analysis. As such, it is best placed to deliver timely and relevant tweets to their users. By doing so it would also remove the potential abuse of the service by those seeking personal, monetary gain.
Block the third party ad networks! With Twitter at the controls, the odds of success (for both users, advertisers and Twitter) go up, way up.
Twitter does need a revenue model. So why not TweetSense?
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