Opinion: The launch of @TwitterAds

In conjunction with their new advertising feed, Twitter also launched an advertising blog, devoted to providing the same value to agencies and advertisers. After trawling through the initial blog post, and being one of the first 500 followers of @TwitterAds, I started to consider what real value both channels could provide to marketers, advertisers and agency folk, alike.

Twitter seems to be jumping on the advertising bandwagon with initial success observed by attracting big name advertisers: American Express, Cocca-Cola and Starbucks. The new advertising revenue focused stream comes as no shock since organic Twitter use has been quickly growing throughout North America and the UK, and in 2011 Twitter brought in $150 million in ad revenue.

Brands have made their presence known over Twitter for years through organic measures like tweeting consumers with value-added and promotion driven content. Now it seems that Twitter is keen to leverage their advertising success and position themselves as a channel with the ability to handle larger ad capacity. The twitter feed and blog are designed to communicate this; telling brands and agencies how advertising over Twitter will benefit them and what return on investment they can expect. The exact content and impact of both channels is yet to be seen; however, it’s clear that Twitter is making an effort to use their own channel to build partnerships and relationships with agencies and potential advertisers.

After reading about the launch, I immediately visited the new @TwitterAds feed, and tweeted publically, “Having a look around #Twitter's new feed @TwitterAds to see what value it will actually provide. Come on #Twitter, prove it to me!” I was impressed to get a quick response stating “@Jknowltonbell we'll do our best. Tell us what you want to hear about.”

If @TwitterAds can commit to providing value-driven content while growing its user base, then they will have a greater chance of convincing marketers that Twitter is a go-to platform for advertising and can compete with Facebook, whose ad revenue was $1.86 billion in 2010.