Targeted ads are so obvious that I don't understand why they haven't implemented it. Google did it successfully. Facebook did it successfully. In fact, if someone would have said to me a year ago "Twitter will totally ignore their massive pool of user specific data in favor of blanket ads!" I would have literally laughed in their face. "Twitter isn't that thick!" I'd say.
It reminds me of the time I tried to partner with a local print heavyweight over a local portal site w/ a super premo domain. His suggestion was to purchase and post AP content on it.
It's truly just... insane. There's not a better word for it than that. My tweets are a wealth of data about things I care about. There are so many ways to sell truly useful ads against that – you have to be off your nut not to take this approach. Real-time ads that solve your problems without you doing anything more than gabbing away could make Google look like a two-bit lemonade stand.
"Fuck, I hate AT&T. Worst cell phone service ever."
"Join Verizon today! Get $100 credit when you switch from AT&T."
"... Go on."
edit: And assuming you use Twitter mostly for passive consumption, there's still useful to be derived from your stream. "Boy, this guy sure follows a lot of people from Portland, let's show him Moe's Bike shop ads."
How many dozens of Twitter NLP companies for tracking brands are there? Twitter should buy their favorite, and offer brand reinforcement and steal-away ads. Better already.
Isn't the other major problem that "promoted tweets" simply take people to a stream of tweets with that hashtag, which could include smart competitors?
I'd assume it isn't that difficult to write a bot that autoposts with that hashtag each time a "trending topic" vaguely relevant to their area of business shows up. Certainly not compared with the SEO dance.
And if spammers are optimising their ads better than you..
It reminds me of the time I tried to partner with a local print heavyweight over a local portal site w/ a super premo domain. His suggestion was to purchase and post AP content on it.
I just don't follow Twitter's strategy here.