Posts Tagged ‘advertising’
Twitter monitisation: testing the waters
October 8th, 2009
There has been plenty of discussion surrounding Biz Stone’s interview with the Tribune Newspapers in the U.S on Wednesday, as he offered an insight into the platform’s plans for future monetisation. Of course this isn’t the first time Stone has mentioned some sort of corporate premium feature, and he went onto state that new services would be introduced by the end of 2009, as mentioned earlier in the year.
The introduction of paid-for services is an inevitable element of Twitter’s continued development, and by focusing on charges for the corporate user Twitter is testing the water by focusing on the path of least resistance.
However, Stone also confirmed that Twitter would remain free for all users, including businesses, and that the new premium features would focus on additional services such as analytics, which I think many corporate users would happily pay for - depending on cost of course.
“We’re only just now entering a phase in Twitter’s lifetime where we’re able to develop new products,” Stone said to the LA Times.
I think keeping a free service is essential for Twitter, and approaching the monetisation question by introducing new services reduces any potential backlash from Twitter’s legion of advocates who would undoubtedly be less supportive if they were charged for a service they’ve enjoyed for free over the last few years.
The Tribune articles also went onto confirm that Twitter won’t introduce ads this year, and will retain its current model of a fully open platform, which allows third-party developers to continue developing new services to make Twitter a more useful platform: Stone said: “The idea that an economy is being built on the Twitter platform is encouraging to us. It depends on how you look at it. But we look at it as a super-healthy ecosystem. It signals that we’re here to stay.”
The question of Twitter ads is perhaps more of a difficult one to deal with. Changing the way we view Twitter with potentially intrusive advertising will evoke much more of a response than the question of corporate services, and that’s going to be the first real test for Twitter’s quest to build revenue.
Back in September Twitter laid the groundwork for an advertising offering by amending its terms of use to allow advertisers to reach its visitors.
The terms confirmed:
The services may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the content or information on the services, queries made through the services, or other information. The types and extent of advertising by Twitter on the services are subject to change.
In consideration for Twitter granting you access to and use of the services, you agree that Twitter and its third-party providers and partners may place such advertising on the services….
On Twitter’s blog Biz Stone said: “We leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open, as we’ve said before,”
There is much speculation surrounding how Twitter ads could be delivered, including on users’ home pages on the website, or alongside search terms, or even by allowing advertisers to place ads in the streams of tweets, but this would seem very unlikely considering Twitter’s careful approach to keeping users on side to date.
I expect Twitter to remain cautious and avoid upsetting its biggest asset, its loyal followers, at all costs. There will undoubtedly be more changes to Twitter over the next six months, but if done correctly by offering additional services that add value these may in fact open up the platform to more usage, as we’re a very long way from its potential in my opinion.< >< ><–>
Honda’s leap of faith challenges TV advertising
May 30th, 2008
For those of you who missed it, last night at 8:10pm Honda and Channel 4 staged the ‘first’ ever live advert on British television. Whether it really was a first is debatable - I’ve heard reports to the contrary - but nevertheless it was a brave attempt to turn TV advertising on its head by promoting relevance and engagement, and was very successful.
The commercial, which is part of Honda’s ‘Difficult is worth doing’ campaign, featured 19 skydivers who had three minutes and 20 seconds to spell out the word H.o.n.d.a during freefall, before deploying their chutes. A replay can be watched here (suprisingly it has not yet been uploaded to the Honda YouTube channel).
The stunt was a teaser to Honda’s Accord new multi-million pound ad campaign, which airs on 1 June - the production of which has been documented on the ‘Difficult is worth doing’ blog, designed by Collective.
Overall, the ad seems to have been very well received. A Tweet Scan reveals a very positive reaction, with words such as “awesome”, “incredible” and “cool” cropping up a lot.
I was suprised by the limited amount of Honda branding - I’ve seen several reports questioning why there was so little, and I have to admit had I not read about it on the MediaGuardian website in the morning, I might have been a bit confused until the end.
However, setting minor criticism aside, the campaign is a big step towards TV and online ad campaigns being better integrated. With the fast-paced, time-shift culture that we live in today, TV advertisers are going to have to work harder to keep audiences engaged. Could live TV advertising be the answer? It’s not the only solution, and obviously demands big budgets…bit it will be interesting to see the conversion rates this Honda campaign produces.
