NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Will Twitter's New Ad Plan Backfire?
Will Twitter's New Ad Plan Backfire?
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000705.html
Greetings. As a somewhat enthusiastic Twitter user
(@laurenweinstein - http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein )
I've been waiting for quite some time to hear about Twitter's
advertising/monetization plans for their service.
We need wait no longer, as Twitter has now made their ad paradigm
quite explicit, and perhaps not surprisingly, this includes ultimately
inserting ads ("promoted tweets") directly into Twitter users'
tweeting timelines across all Twitter-capable platforms -- at least
that's the very strong implication ( http://bit.ly/9oNT6n
[All Things Digital] ).
As regular readers know, I am most definitely not an Internet ad
hater, nor a promoter of ad blocking (e.g. see: "Blocking Web
Ads -- And Paying the Piper" - http://bit.ly/5meCbq [Lauren's Blog] ).
But as I consider the implications of ads within Twitter timelines, a
whole set of interesting issues comes to mind -- most of which are
likely to be exacerbated by the linear, serial nature of most persons'
Twitter usage, frequently through specialized, API-based desktop
display applications.
Many Twitter users -- especially those who (in their own opinions,
anyway) use Twitter mainly for comparatively serious purposes -- tend
to be rather protective of their timelines. Twitter timelines often
are viewed as something of a "publicly private" space --- open but to
a degree controlled. Twitter obviously recognized this early on, by
providing a mechanism for users to block any other Twitter user from a
given timeline.
But we can assume that Twitter won't be handing us an easy means for
blocking in-timeline Twitter ads. And such ads will be particularly
difficult to ignore, as they'll likely appear seemingly at random
amidst other discussions, and right there mixed in with everything
else -- not off to the side somewhere like a more conventional Web
page ad. (Twitter is talking about ads staying at the top of search
results in their current search implementation, but it isn't clear to
me at this point how they could avoid mixing ads in with conventional
timeline streams in existing API-based Twitter display implementations.)
As the Wicked Witch of the West might have warned Twitter, this is
going to have to be handled "very delicately" -- because the
opportunities for pushback are numerous.
Many firms, organizations, government entities, government officials,
and of course all manner of ordinary folks who use Twitter may not
take kindly to seeing explicit ads in their streams -- especially if
they've taken care to weed out spammers in the past. Commercial ads
in government streams seem especially problematic. Ads for competing
products and services in corporate Twitter timelines may not be
particularly appreciated by the "owners" of those Twitter accounts.
Of course Twitter could offer ad-free accounts to governments and the
like, and even could provide paid "premium" ad-free accounts that
anybody could buy.
But it seems likely that some Twitter users will find their own
creative ways to "strike back" if they find Twitter advertising to be
annoying.
Specialized programs to prevent the display of Twitter ads would seem
a near certainty to be developed, depending on the ease with which
Twitter advertising could be programmatically identified going
forward -- though this doesn't remove the actual ads from the timelines.
A more low-tech approach that many Twitter users are likely to take --
given that the ads will be so "in your face" directly in their
timelines, would be to immediately retort with nasty comments about
the products or services being promoted. The ease with which such
comments could be quickly retweeted would make this approach almost
irresistible to many persons. And we'd likely see the development of
automatic Twitter "robots" to perform the same functions
automatically.
If you're an adherent to the "any publicity is good publicity" school
of advertising, the increased name recognition that such tweeting and
retweeting might engender could perhaps be viewed as a positive
multiplier effect on any given ad-buy reach.
On the other hand, if your ads annoy a Twitter user with followers who
tend to respect that users' opinions, do you necessarily want to see
reply tweets going out to a thousand or a million persons along the
lines of: "That product really sucks big time. I wouldn't use it if
you paid me. I hope someone files a class action lawsuit against
those crooks! You're far better off using ..."
Hmm ...
Fundamentally, what I'm suggesting is that the social and
psychological dynamics of how people will react to seeing uninvited
ads in Twitter timelines is obviously very much an unknown, and I
would assert that trying to draw comparisons from other social
networking ecosystems (or other Web advertising models in general) may
not yield trustworthy or representative data points for comparison.
Once Twitter actually does start inserting ads into timelines, we
should see the reality of reactions in short order.
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It promises to be interesting.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein