Broadcast your Tweets via AdSense
TurboTax is testing a strange new method of advertising – syndicating their twitter status updates in the form of AdSense adverts.
The search giant (Google) has started offering marketers ad units that stream their five most recent “tweets” across the Google AdSense network. The first marketer to use the ad units is Intuit, whose TurboTax brand is trying to boost its Twitter followers. Intuit used several of the measures available for any AdSense campaign to target the ads, which are running on sites such as Bebo, Facebook, Hi5, MySpace and Alltop.
“It’s syndicating whatever the team that works on the TurboTax Twitter account [@turbotax] posts,” said Seth Greenberg, director of marketing at Intuit. When a user clicks on an ad it takes them not to TurboTax.com but to twitter.com/turbotax.
I’m not sure about this – optimising your Twitter status updates to maximise AdSense CTR won’t make you a popular user on Twitter and will people who click on the ads understand what Twitter is when they arrive?
Good PR stunt though.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
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It’s an interesting experiment but maybe RSS would be a better technology for this. It would give marketers far more flexibility and keep their twitter stream relevant.
A very interesting concept. I agree, the PR value is what is going to get them more followers.
Intersting publicity stunt & new way for Google to generate money, would be interesting to know what the cost per click is to twitter follower conversion, seeing as no-one is being sent to an actual sales/product page.
I agree that Tweet ads may be annoying. Twitter has become powerful fast, but is already beginning to scale back limits on followers because of scammers. It won’t be long before users grow tired. Too many Tweeters are using it to broadcast, while not bothering to read anything that comes in….
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