I’m playing around with my Twitter Advertising account, trying to understand Twitter’s path to monetization. The Twitter Advertising interface is pretty clean and simple, allowing me to promote my account or tweets in four easy steps.
Step 1 - I can choose the locations where I want to reach users anywhere in the world, in specific countries only or in specific US cities:
Step 2 - I can promote my Twitter account prominently in the who to follow section to users that are most likely to be interested in my account--I only pay for new followers that I gain:
Step 3 - I can promote my Tweets, prominently displaying them to other users with similar interests:
Step 4 - Then plug in my credit cards to pay for the ad spend I setup for my promoted account or tweets:
Twitter Advertising is pretty straightforward. I wouldn’t call it anything revolutionary. But it is implemented simply, making it work for the masses. I could see businesses adopting it right alongside Google AdWords.
By itself Twitter Advertising makes sense, but when you step back and look at it in context of the rest what’s going on with the Twitter ecosystem, I wonder if they are seeing the big picture.
As a Twitter Advertiser will I be able to:
- Use the Twitter API to truly understand the space I’m advertising in? Track on patterns, opportunities and be able to get at the data I need to make my advertising successful? If I have to pay Gnip or DataSift for my business intelligence, it won’t work
- Have access to an API that gives me full access to the Twitter advertising resource? Allowing me to programmatically tailor my Twitter Advertising campaign
It just seems like to me that Twitter is seriously reducing the potential network effect by not including the Twitter API ecosystem in the Twitter Advertising program. Developers could help deliver innovation beyond just promoted accounts and tweets, extend the reach of advertising if they had more access to data via the Twitter APIs, optimize advertising campaign effectiveness with more API access as well as automate Twitter advertising with an API directly for the advertising platform.
