The ‘Long Overdue’ part of the headline to this post actually relates to my MASSIVE lack of activity on the blog recently – I have been meaning to write my thoughts on Twitter’s opportunity to generate revenue for absolutely AGES!
I think their considered (or delayed…) approach to making cash is at worst, interesting and at best, incredibly wise.
They have their funding, they are mapping their run rate VERY carefully and they have a whole load of options.
My interest around the whole ‘Twitter making money’ saga doesn’t centre around the company itself but more around the countless journo’s, bloggers and so-called ‘industry experts’ who have been speculating, in my opinion wrongly, about how this rising star of new media will make its billions.
So many who should know better have gone away and written poxy attempts at modelling revenue based on a display ad model – Whether they talk about indescriminate banners, buttons and MPU’s or ‘contextually relevant’ PPC ads placed in and around tweets.
The models around paid subscriptions are even worse – This is all SO WRONG.
Twitter needs to play to its strengths – Users like the service because it is free and doesn’t carry any ‘clutter’… no ads confounding you into accidentally clicking or encroaching on your privacy by seemingly ‘reading’ your tweets and marketing accordingly.
Twitter does not offer a new platform which creatives can use to pioneer exciting brand campaigns, actually quite the opposite – Twitter uses a simple user interface to enable and encourage short (and often opinionated) comments, conversations and information exchanges.
Ultimately, the service carries massive amounts of real-time data, which if put into context, can be invaluable in providing research in the form of customer feedback, user reviews, word of mouth spreading (+ve/-ve) and much more.
The real value Twitter has to offer brands and agencies and therefore where it would make most money in the shortest possible time is strongly centered around providing timely insight on any given subject – I am well aware that there are 3rd party tracking services which you can set to monitor certain key words and similar but what I am talking about is a Twitter-built dashboard enabling the simple monitoring of words and trends with the ability to drill into more complex detail at the click of a button.
Think about mapping +ve/-ve user commentary against their twitter ranking (those with more followers being more powerful), assessing the value of a tweet to a user (the more frequently a user tweets, the more diluted each tweet becomes) and perhaps most importantly, being able to apportion location to a conversation – It’s great that people are talking about your product positively, but if they are all in NYC and you’re launching in London then perhaps you should reasses your strategy… see where I’m going with all this?
Once you have isolated the users you want to target based on their tweets/followers/locations, there is then a value in using display/direct marketing opportunities to communicate with them – But ONLY once you have assessed the data first.
There are clear signs that research and insight tools are becoming more crucial to the way agencies and their clients conduct their campaigns and that means more money for companies providing these services – Sir Martin Sorrrell’s recent $25M investment into Omniture stands as testament to this trend.
So, let’s stop all this silly talk about banners, buttons, text links and alike – The display model was nowhere near perfect to start with, why impose a legacy concept onto an emerging platform when you could totally revoloutionise the way brands view the value of a conversation.
Rory Sutherland talks very highly of an innovative service called Fizzback, I say Twitter is already carrying the information marketers so desperately seek, they are merely lacking the tools to collate and interpret.
After an outrageously successful first event, the great team at One Alfred Place have set the date for the next poker night and again, the whole show will be proudly sponsored by Woodford Reserve.
The exclusive members club provides the perfect setting for London’s media crew to trade banter as well as chips across the poker table. The final table will have it’s own dealer and there will be free drinks for those that are quick, courtesy of the generous people at Woodford Reserve.
The prize fund is expected to be over £500 and the winner will also take home a bottle of Woodford Reserve premium bourbon.
Entry is free for club members and £5 for non-members (got to be worth it for the free drinks alone!).
Tournament buy-in is £10, all of which goes directly into the pot (no registration fee).
Seats are limited and entry is strictly by guest list only.
Email, call, text or tweet guest list requests to cranealistair@gmail.com, 07886 465 471, @adfundal with attendee and company names.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of lunching with someone who has been very kind and encouraging to me since I joined the UK mobile advertising fraternity.
Annabel Hembry is Head of Mobile at Associated Newspapers and one of the few realists that you will meet in this game.
She has masses of previous experience and isn’t afraid to highlight that something won’t work, is overpriced, isn’t technically possible… you get the idea. But she also is the first one to push forward ideas that are possible, and will make sense as well as cents (and the rest).
I have a huge amount of respect for what she has done, especially with the launch of the Metro mobile site – Very cool indeed.
Annabel has managed to successfully bridge the gap between her colleagues working on the long-established traditional media side of the business and the Directors who are looking to create revenue streams from new media.
By offering exclusive content that people are interested in, through innovative platforms she has created an environment in which users are actually prepared to spend money on content in return for enjoyment – No spam, no secret billing, just a great service that people like.
There need to be more people like her, at least one in every major department of any sizeable traditional media owner – Right now that is not the case, the demand from media owners to employ people who understand new media is increasing but there is a distinct lack of experience coupled with talent in mobile. This will undoubtedly change over time, the sooner the better.
You can follow Annabel on Twitter @Bels1 or see her speak at a number of leading industry events - more on this soon.
On the whole, Verizon are a good carrier with impressive aspirations who have made some excellent investments and partnerships, especially those to do with mobile advertising.
This doesn’t make them infallible, they are still subject to the odd fail every now and again.
Marko Ahtisaari and team have created something interesting and relevant given the activities in Washington D.C. earlier today.
Yet another cool example of what you can do with the right technology and maps – Check this out:
Dopplr generated what they call the Personal Annual Reportfor all their users. It’s a unique-to-you PDF of data, visualisations and factoids about your travel in 2008, that they’re delivering over the next week via email to every Dopplr user who travelled in 2008.
To give you an example, they have published the Personal Annual Report of someone who’s had a very busy 2008 – President Elect Barack Obama.
Then, in the main body of the report there are a number of other things from your 2008 we try and surface, such as the fellow travellers that you coincide with most on your trips.
There’s the by-now-familiar Dopplr map of your travels which in Obama’s case tells a very interesting tale based on the shape of his campaign. You can see the perhaps-unusual whistlestop trips to Europe, the Middle-East, and Afghanistan – the barely-visible dots of which indicate the brevity of those stops.
Taking a closer look at the USA, the pattern of the campaign becomes more apparent. Larger circles correspond to battleground states during the campaign and other notable events can be seen, such as the visit made due to the sad illness and passing of Obama’s grandmother, registering as a circle over Hawaii.
As a man with strong views on climate-change, the environment and energy, the President-Elect will no doubt be very interested in the carbon estimate of his travels during the campaign as calculated by AMEE.
Dopplr deliberately chose a provocative visualisation here – a scale of the equivalent CO2 yearly output of Hummer SUVs to convey the estimate in concrete terms. Many of us after all would think very hard about driving such a vehicle, perhaps harder than we do about taking a flight.
Blyk will no longer offer members 217 mins and 43 texts.
Instead, the team at Blyk have decided to offer a more comprehensive package of £15 of credit per month which members can use on whatever they wish… almost.
Calls, SMS, MMS and data are included but premium services are not.
OK, this looks pretty cool. I am a big fan of making the service as flexible as possible and have no doubt that members will enjoy accessing their chosen social network(s), email accounts, maps etc. for free BUT if a member just wants to make calls and send texts then they are quite a lot worse off – Ricky Chotai at Mobile Industry Review is sharp with numbers and has run the maths to find out exactly what is being gained/lost, check his smart post out here.
So mins and text are reduced but at least you can go and buy whatever content you want – No.
Blyk launched a major content offering at the start of this year which looks impressive… aesthetically anyway, haven’t had the chance to use it.
It seems like you can use your credit to surf the portal but not to actually purchase content, you’ll have to top up with real money for that.
This is smart for two reasons.
Firstly, because it will encourage members to browse the content portal and inevitably some of them will top up and buy ringtones, games, wallpapers etc. thus creating an additional revenue stream.
Secondly and in my opinion, most importantly – Blyk has created extra inventory to sell to advertisers in the form of interstitials, pre-rolls, banners, branded gaming et al.
Not bad – They have managed to increase advertising revenue potential, decrease cost of maintaining members AND offer members more choice on how they wish to communicate.
Smart move ,but everyone already knows that these guys are no fools – Just check out the management team.
ASDA is promoting its UK stores with a new service that places its logo where its stores are located on satnav maps.
As the supermarket tries to drive cash-strapped consumers into stores, it has signed up to NAVTEQ’s Direct Access adverrtiser solution which allows ASDA to provide people with store information on a branded map.
ASDA said the maps work as a cost-effective advertising platform for the supermarket, as they reach users ‘at the moment they are ready to make a purchase’.
Research has prpven that 74% of people prefer to see brand logos on the map rather than generic icons and 62% of navigation system owners drive to the businesses that they look up on their navigation devices. It allows banks, coffee shops, petrol stations, grocery stores, hotels, chemists, restaurants and other retailers to advertise their services on NAVTEQ maps.
Download a PDF copy of Barack Obama’s 2008 Dopplr Personal Annual Report from 
