As of today, Twitter.com does not host traditional banner ads. Earlier this year Twitter reinforced on their blog that “traditional web banner advertising isn’t interesting to [them].” They then went on to explain that, of course, they don’t hate advertising and are leaving the door open for exploration regarding this specific idea. A few months later, on September 10th, they modified their terms of service to allow for advertising. There were no specific comments around what kind of advertising might be available but again it was emphasized they were leaving the door open.
Throughout this time the social media marketing company IZEA launched a new venture named Sponsored Tweets. Here’s how it works: Sponsored Tweets website offers a slew of celebrity tweeters including reality TV stars, movie stars, rock stars, authors, and web celebs that businesses can choose to sponsor, as well as some “staff pick” tweeters that come at a much lower cost. In reality it is the celeb doing the sponsoring, they are paid (and as can be seen on the website they don’t come cheap!) per tweet to mention a certain product and in most cases offer a link to a corresponding website, store, etc. IZEA and the Sponsored Tweets program stresses on their site they are committed to ethical behavior and their tweeters “are required to disclose their relationship with marketers”. They also showcase their Disclosure Engine whose interface forces the tweeter to choose a disclosure text phrase, i.e. my sponsor, sponsor, sponsored, ad, before they submit their tweet. This all seems like an obvious win-win situation: brilliant, well thought out idea, profit generating for both IZEA and the various featured tweeters, as well as obvious benefits for the participating businesses. But what about the tweeters on the other end, the audience for these sponsored tweets?
Below are different variations of what these sponsored tweets look like, tweeted this month from reality TV stars Holly Madison and Kim Kardashian.
As you can see this one came directly from the Sponsered Tweets Directory Engine and features the word sponsored to start off. The one below though, came from Twitter.com via a mobile device and only features the hashtag #spon.
As you can see these are not auto-generated advertisements. They seem to be written by the actual person tweeting them, and they add personal preferences, dialogue, etc. to them. The bottom tweet came out first on Oct 8th and when reading it, I did not even think about what #spon meant. At first glance I thought Holly Madison really went out and bought these soaps because of their green, natural, and vegan characteristics and was sharing which scent was her favorite. The second tweet on Oct 12th is as equally misleading in my opinion, although it does start with the word sponsored, it is written very personally and without clicking on the link you may not know if the word sponsored pertains just to the link or may just gloss over it all together. My biggest problem with these sponsored links is the fact they are being paid large sums of money just to send out 140 characters.
Keeping this in mind, it seems reasonable to wonder if they have even tried the product. Did the company really send Holly the soaps to try? Is that really even her favorite scent or were the terms specified for her to say that. It seems that for the amount of money being paid, the business should have 100% control of what is being written, and more than likely, she is just writing exactly what they told her to. The tweet below is regarding a movie release tweeted by Kim Kardashian. It does say SPONSORED in capital letters which is a bit more obvious than Madison’s lowercase version, but again it is not an auto-generated advertisement and speaks directly to Kim’s personal life.
The tweet below presents an even further conflict. This tweet does not include sponsored or a link. But as Kardashian depicted on her blog days earlier, her birthday party in Vegas was actually hosted by T-Mobile and she received the CLIQ from the company that night. Was she paid to write this tweet? Or does she actually really like this phone? This tweet does not seem to have been facilitated by Sponsored Tweets, but it seems once the idea of paying active tweeting celebrities for advertising mentions was introduced, businesses could very well take it into their own hands. If she was indeed paid for this it may or may not violate Twitter terms of service or other new legal crackdowns regarding paid content and disclosure.
Sponsored Tweets take on many forms, many speaking directly as advertisements for sales, grand openings, etc. And while these can be annoying, distracting, and a good way to lose followers, it is the personal product endorsements seen above that make me really question the idea and future of this form of Twitter advertising. For some the appeal of Twitter is that it closed the gap between every day, average (and I use that term very loosely) people and celebrities, political leaders, and the like. They could see into some aspects of these “famous” people’s everyday lives, what they were doing, what they like, what they didn’t like, what they indulge in, etc. This form of sponsored tweeting definitely impedes on that idea.
Is this a great idea for companies to get their idea out to more than just their direct followers? Another spammy gimmick? Or just plain deceiving? What do you think? Leave a comment!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post! I have mixed feelings on this as a marketer & an “average” Tweeter. I think as long as the tweets are specifically called out as a sponsored tweet, it is credible.
When it gets into the question of, “is this celebrity really using this product,” I think of TV commercials. Celebrities are paid a lot of money to sponsor a product that they may never have used. Does anybody really sit on the couch and wonder – “Does Donald Trump really shop at Macy’s?” “Does Halle Berry really have an iPhone?” “Is the pink iPhone case really her favorite color?” They are also given a script of exactly what to say.
So when looking in from that perspective, sponsored tweets aren’t any different than a commercial, as long as they’re designated as sponsored. However, because it’s happening in the social realm which is an area honesty and transparency, the credibility of the celebrity and brand may be at risk if the tweets are perceived as deceiving.
I think there’s a huge difference between Twitter and TV for the same reasons that Cassandra outlined above. Twitter is a way to connect with the “real” person behind the celebrity. It’s the reason why following people like Shaq is so fun, he talks about what he’s actually doing, eating, seeing, thinking and that gives you a glimpse of his real personality.
When advertisements enter that medium, it’s unexpected. When you see a comercial you KNOW that they probably don’t use the product because we’re jaded and we’re used to that. In Twitter we’re a little bit more trusting because up till now, it wasn’t advertising, it was real. And now the ‘real’ is mixing with the fake.
Shaq could say he went to a restaurant and loved the steak he got – and mean it. Or he could say the exact same thing because he was paid to. And the disclaimer is sometimes easy to miss or decieving because you never know if they were paid to say they went to the restaurant, and then threw in their own opinion at the end, or if they were paid for the whole thing.
140 characters is just not enough to truly clarify it.