The question all along has been – “how will Twitter monetize?” and it looks like we have at least one answer today. According to an article in MediaPost, the release of a Twitter ad platform is “imminent” and we’ll likely signs of it on our Twitter feeds within a month.
According to the article, Anamitra Banerji told MediaPost after a meeting Monday, “We are working on an ad platform, but it’s only in the test phase.”
Banerji assured MediaPost that Twitter would make it “explicity clear” that a post was from an advertiser and not a regular users. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association recently released a guide for companies to use, suggesting they use #spon, #paid, and #samp hashtags to indicate their relationship to a product being tweeted about. Banerji said this was simply a good work around, but that Twitter would take a different approach.
As opposed to someone tweeting about a product, these ads will be owned and operated by Twitter, much in the same way Google offers its AdSense advertising. Banerji did, however, offer a statement that separated the Twitter ad platform from others:
“We don’t think of ourselves as a Web site — essentially it’s a platform,” Banerji said. “We don’t really control the ads or the way the tweets are viewed and then consumed. We are completely open around other people innovating around us. Ultimately, publishers should have choice. But the one area of concern for us — and that’s if bad ads get identified in Twitter — it’s a problem for us in the long term. So, we should do whatever we can to encourage positive behavior.”
While the article says we should see signs in about a month, we can only wonder how long it will be. If you remember, Twitter announced their “hovercards” feature at the beginning of this month, but most of us are still waiting to see the feature pop up on our own pages.
This one, however, looks like it might be around by the beginning of next month, according to GigaOm. They report that “one source in the media industry” says that Twitter may launch the ad network during South By Southwest Interactive, which begins in Austin on March 12.
