Facebook, Twitter, lend new ad revenue streams

Posted by Leah McBride Mensching on February 2, 2010 at 4:33 PM

Social networking sites, especially Facebook and micro-blogging service Twitter, have seen enormous growth over the past few years, and news outlets are using the two to attract a wider audience, keep dedicated readers close and distribute stories to a wider audience.

The Austin American-Statesman, The New York Times and The Huffington Post are all experimenting with new ways to generate ad revenue using both social networking sites, and are discovering that benefits can be two-fold: news outlets gain new social networking audiences, while advertisers gain a new way to engage consumers, Poynter Online reported. Meanwhile, smaller businesses that have less advertising dollars to spend are able to reach consumers in a newer, more cost-effective way.

At The Austin American-Statesman, for example, advertisers can pay for tweets on two of the newspaper's Twitter accounts, @Austin360 and @Statesman. Two advertisers, a restaurant and haunted house, paid $300 each per day in autumn 2009, and were each given a 124-character tweets, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Most followers found the ads to be non-intrusive, said Robert Quigley, the newspaper's social media editor. This is likely because he stipulated that the adverts must be action-related, such as giving a special offer that benefits readers, as opposed to just an ad.

"We just thought this would be the sweet spot for things people would actually be interested in. What we wanted to avoid was a used car ad -- a lot of the traditional advertisements we have in print or online - that we just didn't think would work with this audience," he said.

One challenge was to get advertisers to understand just how big of an audience some news outlets have on Twitter and Facebook, he said. Another challenge is balancing ads so that they're helpful, and don't make followers feel they're being overwhelmed with ads, or like their opinion isn't valuable. "I think the community has to come first," he said.

The New York Times has begun selling packaged advertisements that appear to users who enter NYTimes.com via Twitter and Facebook. Although social media is not a large money maker yet, it is likely an important revenue stream to put in place, Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer of The New York Times Media Group, told Poynter.

Advertisers are "looking for creative ideas around social media. It's definitely something that's gaining more interest than it did six or nine months ago," she said. "It's no secret that the consumer is interested in social communities and networking. Taking advantage of that is at the forefront of it all."

The Huffington Post is also now allowing advertisers to pay for tweets and comments, and plans to train them on how to interact with followers when tweeting ads. Just using social networking "as another way to 'hawk' products" won't work, and advertisers understand that, Greg Coleman, president and chief revenue officer at The Huffington Post, told Poynter. "Instead, it's an exciting way for them to connect with potential consumers and to generate goodwill by adding something of value to the user experience."