It’s no secret that social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are free to everyone and so they must rely on other areas to create revenue. On the Internet, fortunes are made through advertising on high-traffic sites. Clients who want to advertise their products want to be on the forefront of what is new and exciting for their targeted demographics. This leaves social networks like Twitter to create original and innovative ways that advertisers can utilize their network.
Twitter has developed three ways to be successful in advertising within their social platform. “Promoted Tweets” allows for advertisers to get their tweets seen by everyone, even by those who don’t follow them. “Promoted Trends” allows marketers to place a sponsored phrase at the bottom of Twitter’s trending topics list. This list allows Twitter users to instantly get all of the dirt on the hot topics of the day. Finally, “@earlybird” retweets special deals and promotions so that advertisers can get their products noticed. All three of these promotional tools are an attractive way to advertise on Twitter. However, in order to manage the ads in the long run, Twitter realized that it needed some direction.
Recently, Twitter hired its first two ad executives. Dan Coughlin, who has worked for Facebook for the last 4 years, is slated to be the Director of Sales for the Eastern region, and Amanda Levy, who has worked at Yelp for the past 5 years, for the Western region. As a team, the two will strategize, form ad sales teams and help Twitter utilize their network as an advertising tool. This could mean big things for Twitter users like us here at Sabre and other potential advertisers in the world of social media. Will they be inserting ads within our feeds or including them in search results? Stay tuned!