Twitter Advertising 2.0
Twitter has been reluctant to fully launch their advertising platform for all brands to use; instead, a handful of early adopters, like Virgin Mobile and Starbucks are the guinea pigs of the program to work out any snafu’s that may show up. By now, you’ve probably seen ads when you search trending topics or terms on Twitter. What you’re seeing is what I call Twitter Advertising 1.0. As Twitter users are more comfortable with seeing ads and ad agencies find out ways to maximize the use of Twitter, surely the advertising on Twitter will evolve. Here is my guess as to where it will go. Most agree the background space of Twitter pages is mainly useless. If you don’t believe me, follow this link to Twitter creator, Jack Dorsey’s page; he is using a beyond simple brown background with a generic picture of five flying seagulls. Even if you use a custom background to match your personal brand or company’s brand, there is little to no functionality of the background. The inability to put hyper-links as your background image is very much the main issue. Without links, the internet is very brochure-like and just as bad as any other traditional media, if not worse. Linking images to other websites can be for personal advertising or for corporate advertising in what I call Twitter Advertising 2.0 With Twitter Advertising 2.0 (T.A. 2.0), Twitter will allow brands to choose and or bid on certain Twitter pages to advertise on, similar to Google Adsense, if not exactly the same. Every account will either allow or deny ads on their background space depending upon their preference. For those who choose to allow it, there will be a revenue sharing model used for the account holder and Twitter based on click throughs or impressions. Obviously, the more followers and influence a Twitter user has, the more they will be compensated for the ads on their background due to the higher demand for the page’s space. Advertisers can use websites like Twitter Grader to determine the value of an individual’s Twitter account; maybe it will work in conjunction with T.A. 2.0. With Twitter Grader, every page is given a score out of 100 points and ranked among every active account based on a secret algorithm. I wouldn’t even doubt various marketing firms going as far as concocting their own algorithms to suit their own needs and beliefs. With T.A. 2.0, bloggers and other types of influential individuals will be able to monetize their blog or personal brand from more than merely their website. For example, campaigns can be started where a blogger has Whole Foods advertisement on their Twitter page AND their blog. Most advertisers are well aware a consumer needs to see an ad an average of three times before it really sticks, so, a Twitter and blog combo campaign will already have two impressions down. 
Visualizing what Twitter can be for advertisers as well as users puts everything into perspective where we now realize how primitive Twitter currently is with respect to its overall potential.
