With millions of people using Twitter every day, it was just a matter of time before someone found a way to turn all those tweets into an advertising. So far, Twitter itself has not rolled out any monetization plan, but others who use Twitter have. One such monetization model, an pay per click advertising model based on CPM, is Adjix.
Adjix is an URL shortening service that allows its users to shorten their URLs on Twitter. Because Twitter has a strict 140 character limit for every tweet, many URLs would not pass the muster and if you include a long enough message with the URL that you are promoting it becomes even more of an issue for constant tweeters, or is it Twitterers?
Along with URL shortening, Adjix allows its users to earn revenue in two ways. By making each shortened URL an advertising board and by embedded ads in the tweets.
The advertising board model places an ad at the top of a web page after a fellow Twitterer clicks your link. The ad is chosen by the URL shortener and is selected from a variety of categories. If the person who visits that web page clicks on the ad at the top of the web page then the URL shortener earns a little bit of revenue.
The embedded ad model pays URL shorteners based on the number of followers that they have and based on the advertiser’s bid. It works for the advertiser because you can bid based on the value of the tweet. If you bid .001 per Twitter-follower then when a Twitterer who has 1,000 followers embeds your ad in one tweet you pay $1. Note that you are paying for views, not clicks. So if you see a 20% CTR then you have paid $1 for 200 click-throughs.
With some high powered users with thousands of followers, this could prove to be an effective advertising model for you, but I haven’t tried it. I mention it as an option. With Twitter growing and entering the mainstream, Adjix could very well prove to be a unique and effective method of advertising and reaching your target market.
