Word is circulating on Wall Street that Twitter is going public. This isn’t entirely surprising. But it is a BIG deal. Obviously, some investors and Twitter execs are going to be rich, rich dudes. But, it’s a big deal for marketers too.
Why? Because Twitter will need to monetize even more.
Twitter Ads
IPOs force companies to figure out their monetization strategy. Twitter is doing a good job, but there will be pressure–from external forces and investors–to make even more money.
This means two things for marketers:
More Opportunities to Advertise on Twitter
We saw the same thing with Facebook. Once they went public they had to figure out how to make money. It seems like every few weeks Facebook comes out with another way to monetize their audience. Suddenly, after the IPO, there were Promoted Posts, Sidebar Ads, Promoted Posts with Videos, Boosted Posts, etc. al.
Twitter will have to go through a similar monetization learning curve. My guess is that they will introduce new and unique ways to promote Tweets, promote specific Twitter accounts, and promote content. This will probably involve hyper-local targeting and marketing.
There will be more ways for marketers to advertise on Twitter
Twitter Ads Will Become Less Effective
But…more ads means that more people tune ads out. A good example of this is FailBlog.org. I used to be a big FailBlog reader. Now, I can’t even stand to look at it. Too many ads.
The trick for marketers will be weighing new advertising opportunities on Twitter vs. the possible decreased effectiveness of those ads.
