Twitter ads a salami strategy and potential crisis PR tactic
In this guest posting, Reading Room’s Cathie McGinn argues that Twitter’s new advertising model could be a new weapon for a brand involved in crisis PR management or looking to drive a time-limited campaign.
Twitter’s attempt at an advertising revenue model is neither innovative nor confronting.
It’s what a Swiss friend of mine calls the ‘salami tactic’ –the idea that distasteful things are a little more palatable when you choke them down piece by piece. Twitter is introducing Promoted Tweets –tweets given prominent placement by brands paying for the privilege – initially only in its search results, with plans to roll this out into users’ timelines once the model has been thoroughly tested and refined.
It’s based on a model we’re already very familiar with. Google has been doing it to great effect, incrementally and iteratively changing the way that results in paid and organic search are displayed, and we’ve become accustomed to sponsored listings creeping into our browser’s hot spots.
The real news story is that Twitter is actually (finally) doing something. It’s the thin edge of the wedge and we’ll see Twitter test the forgiveness of the user base over the coming months as they make the move into more intrusive advertising models.
Twitter is legendary in web start-up terms for launching a service largely flying blind to its possible commercial potential, without thought of a revenue model and essentially allowing its users to inform the platform of its own function. The team have been smart and responsive in this wise, introducing changes gradually – from the shift from the invitation to answer the question, “what are you doing?” to the broader call to interact we see now, “what’s happening?” along with more significant changes, like opening the API to third party developers and charging Google and Bing for access to its content.
What’s interesting is that these Promoted Tweets are what Twitter referrers to as ‘organic’ – meaning they will be created by the brand or advertiser as an ordinary tweet. Unlike services such as Magpie which were created around the ‘cash for tweet’ model and were widely vilified for being deceptive, these are tweets which will be posted as per usual, but will be given greater prominence of placement through paid promotion.
This will be a powerful way for advertisers to ensure that certain tweets will reach more of their target market – for example for the duration of a limited offer. Another dimension for brands to consider is the ability to pay for prominence of a particular tweet as a crisis management tool, which would have enabled Nestle, for example, to ensure a tweet in response to the palm oil backlash was viewed by the widest possible audience.
According to recent figures, the number of people using Twitter on the web is only around 46% – Sponsored Tweets will be much later in coming to third party apps, so those using Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Peoplebrowsr and the host of other providers will have to wait a while longer to decide whether to get angry or not.
This form of advertising will potentially be relevant, effective and lucrative if implemented the right way. There will be a significant backlash (organised via Twitter) but the commercial reality is that users are not in a position to ask for their money back. It will be interesting to see how the management of Twitter test the elasticity of the user base.
The early signs are that they will do it gently and for the most part effectively and as none of the users have handed over a cent we’re not in a position to protest the changes financially.
I must make clear that this entire piece was written without ever having seen a Promoted Tweet in the wild; sample searches for “coffee”, “iPhone””apple” and even “pies” failed to rouse one from the depths.
- Cathie McGinn is a principal at Reading Room Australia
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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be curious to see how they compare with the facebook click rates – not all that good, as I recall.
Be interested to see if there are any changes to the T&Cs regarding advertising – to lock down on people using Twitter for advertising without paying Twitter….
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If you search for ‘coffee’ now, you get a Starbucks ad. It has begun. I think it’s definitely wise of them to start with search rather than much more intrusive main timeline ads. It also makes sense from a relevance point of view of course. In financial terms, it’s has certainly worked for Google.
It’ll be interesting to see how users take it in the coming weeks and months. As you say, we really have no choice, other than to stop using the service. Waiting this long to implement ads means that a lot of users are pretty hooked on the service for their day to day communication. I know I am.
Having said that, in the past, if users haven’t like a new feature or function, they haven’t been afraid to let the company know, en mass.
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This may work in search, but I’m wondering how these ads will look and feel in other Twitter contexts. For me, a Twitter timeline is a much more personal space than browsing a news website or whatever, because it’s a stream of conversation with those I’ve chosen to be part of my instantaneous connections.
Will commercial messages seem too intrusive? Will they be able to look any less lame than “you mentioned ‘coffee’ so we’ll bleat ‘Starbucks'”? That’s no different from the Twitter word-match spammers we already instantly block. Could backfire.
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I wonder if the promoted tweets will be included within the twitter firehose?
/y0z
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I resent the name Salami Strategy and the definition supplied. I love salami!
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A good first look at promoted tweets. Another whole new thing for us to all think about as we guide clients through the social and semantic maze
I have a sponsored link in my blog post )http://pushagency.net/2010/04/15/twitter-might-be-twits/) but you have probably already seen them by now
Jimi Bostock
PUSH agency
BRISBANE | CANBERRA| SYDNEY
AUSTRALIA
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They’d want to be careful. I don’t think Twitter would be that hard to reproduce and slap another name on it so if they piss too many people off they may have a competitor on their hands.
I think, however, that like with most things we will just get used to it. Will be interesting to hear some results on the effectiveness of these sponsored tweets though.
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Twitter killed its competitors on the way up (Pownce and Jaiku come to mind). It’s only real competitor these days is Facebook, which has taken on Twitter-like features. Foursquare seems to be gaining steam but is something different again.
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