Promoted Tweets. Is This The End Or The Start Of A Profitable New Era For Twitter?

After 4 years has Twitter finally revealed their much anticipated business model - Promoted Tweets. Does this spell the end of Twitter as we know it or the start of a profitable new era of advertising where marketer and consumer are connected in real time?

Firstly what are Promoted Tweets? Well acording to Twitter all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single “ad” in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter. This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising.

You can see an example below of a Promoted Tweet from Starbucks that was featured on Advertising Age.


Users will see Promoted Tweets at the top of Twitter search results page and in Twitter app clients. Over time we could also see ads in our user feeds. While on the surface Promoted Tweets in users feeds  screams for abuse by spammers, Twitter has addressed this with the concept of resonance. Think Quality Score for Twitter.

Resonance takes into account nine factors, including the number of people who saw the post, the number of people who replied to it or passed it on to their followers, and the number of people who clicked on links. If a post does not reach a certain resonance score, Twitter will no longer show it as a promoted post. That means that the advertiser will not have to pay for it, and users will not see ads they do not find useful.

And it's this concept of resonance which has the potential to make or break the success of Promoted Tweets. If Twitter get the resonance algorithm right and ensure value and relevancy from Promoted Tweets then the potential to connect the right message with the right person at the right time has never been greater.

Initially Promoted Tweets are only open to select number of big brand advertisers the service will be rolled over the coming weeks and months to other advertisers. We'll keep you posted.

What do you think of Promoted Tweets? I'd love to hear your feedback.

This article was posted by Matt Forman. Matt is Managing Director at Traffika. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattforman.