Twitter’s got a new plan to make money from its ultrapopular micropublishing system — copy Google’s lucrative search ads — according to All Things D.
The idea is that Twitter will let advertisers sign up to have their ads show up as tiny 140-word posts when users search through Twitter or through other search engines that use its API. As Peter Kafka describes it: A search for, say, “laptop,” may generate an ad for Dell. The ads will only show up in search results, which means users who don’t search for something won’t see them in their regular Twitterstreams…. The services will have the option of displaying the ads, and Twitter will share revenue with those that do. hat’s a fine way to start, because it won’t really interfere with the current reading and publishing of the system, and allows the company time to tune its algorithms. Google’s tech juggernaut runs on text ads, and still makes some 60 percent of its more than $20 billion annual revenue from these kinds of contextual ads placed next to search results — the first ad product it ever introduced.
Google makes about a third of its money from its AdSense program, which lets publishers sign up and have little text ads run on their websites.
That kind of program is the logical next step for Twitter, allowing users to sign up to have, say, every 10th post be an ad placed through Twitter. That ad is related to something the user is talking about (an ad for a nearby restaurant if a user is talking about a neighborhood), or simply a branded ad placed because the advertiser likes a particular Twitterer’s audience.
While that might be more lucrative for Twitter, it would certainly be a larger change and could alienate users. So that makes starting with search ads — something nearly all net users are comfortable with and expect — a smart place for Twitter to start, even if there isn’t all that much searching going on.
Pundits and tech journalists have been wondering for years when and how Twitter would make money. Add this plan to the current recurring millions it gets from licensing its real-time streams to Microsoft and Google, and Twitter has a pretty good answer.
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