How Twitter Makes Money
A look at Twitter's advertising opportunities.
A look at Twitter's advertising opportunities.
On January 24, eMarketer predicted that Twitter would bring in a bit over $150 million in 2011 and $250 million in 2012. (You can see the chart at the bottom of this column.) Is this realistic? I think it may be from what I have learned and am writing about below.
Twitter’s “Promoted” Products
Recently my firm had a very interesting series of calls and meetings with Twitter and I got my head around all the details of its advertising or “Promoted” products. Twitter’s offerings have three attributes that really struck the value/performance chord in my book:
So here is a quick breakdown of what those products are offering:
Twitter is also giving advertisers dashboards that let them see things like impressions, clicks, and before and after account performance and follower count stats. (See example below.)
Oh, and one more little nugget. Here is the chart from eMarketer showing the growth trend of Twitter’s revenue.
Source: eMarketer
Now, if I sound like a cheerleader in this column, my apologies. I have to confess that I’m a lot more excited about these offerings than I typically get from most online opportunities. I think it’s because everyone in our industry knows what Twitter is and yet so few people have actually ever advertised on it. I also think that the performance-based products genuinely offer real value – it’s not just fluff. I guess time will tell on its ROI from a branding and conversion standpoint.
Harry is off today. This column was originally published on February 1, 2011 on ClickZ.