With Twitter jumping head-first into search, will it be able to monetize? Search was the goldmine that Google and Overture were first able to monetize. There were any number of web sites that attempted to become Portals; Excite, Yahoo, Live, iWon, etc. These weren’t able to convert that traffic into actual dollars.
Google and Overture proved that their was a way to monetize the propensity of the individual searching for content to engage with an advertiser. Will the same propensity exist for Twitter real-time content:
Objection: OK, but Twitter searches aren’t commercial, so no one can make money selling ads next to them.
Ridiculous. One reason people search Twitter so much is that it’s a great way to find quick, 140-character reviews of products like restaurants, movies, and gadgets. These are search queries that advertisers are already spending money on. For example, do a quick Google search for the top trending terms on Twitter right now and see what ads come up. Right now we’re seeing a History.com ad for “Cinco De Mayo,” a 1-800-FLOWERS ad for “Mother’s Day,” and an ad from Whole Foods “Swine Flu.” Either way, (By the way, if we’re Twitter or Google, we sell an ad to Corona for the Cinco De Mayo searches — duh.)
Searching Real Time content will make or break Twitter. To be successful, a few things need to be proved:
- Real Time search will need to predicate a purchasing decision. If not, the advertising on Twitter will be just as effective as advertising on Facebook and Myspace has become. This is simply because visitors may not have a propensity to buy or even shop around.
- Will advertisers get this medium? It took awhile for advertisers to understand CPC advertising vs CPM. Each new medium has a different model for advertising; newspapers, radio, TV and web (content). The same will be true of real time search.
- Advertisers will need to understand that they can’t control the content. This was true for news sites and is much more so with blogs. Though, with services such as Twitter it is completely out of their control. If they are scared to advertise in this space, they need not worry, as their competitors won’t be.
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Interesting points… It will result in a gaming technique like SEO is today with google. You can pay to be on top, or you can have content, tags, etc that make you relevant in the search results.
I guess they would expand the existing SEO careerists and open the doors for more demand which is good.
Google seems to get enough revenue from a similar model.
It would be interesting to see what happens if twitter search is indexed into other search engines like google. That would reduce the value of paying for twitter ads (more overhead). I guess the same could be true for Microsoft (if they bought twitter and integrated search with their results).
Any Social Networking site should have already been making information easy to locate. When they do that there will be an obvious targeted audience for relevant ads. I have blogged and micro-blogged about this for months. The best description of what Twitter, FriendFeed or any other Social Media site can do is in the post I wrote about Twitter Advertising.
I linked that post to this comment to make it easy to find. If that is against your commenting rules please feel free to edit the link and this comment.