14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter may not be putting any advertising on the site any time soon but others have jumped at the chance. Though not exactly a proven business model, more and more companies are trying to convince Twitter users and advertisers with in-stream advertising options. Ad.ly, a startup launched just a month ago, is one of these companies and it looks like it may be on the right path, having secured $500,000 in seed funding.
Twitter's popularity and funding allowed the company to worry about growing and not about revenue. The service is set to introduce some sort of premium business services some time this year and it claims it will make money by the year's end but revenue hasn't been a great concern. And advertising is one of the last options on the table for the service, though it isn't completely ruled out. Others are seeing this as a great opportunity and are turning to the less liked practice of sponsored tweets, advertising, which shows up in the regular user stream although they are marked as ads.
Ad.ly offers pretty much the same service but it's positioning itself as premium service offering spots on “celebrity” users streams with a serious following. The ads themselves are likely to cost advertisers a pretty penny, five figure numbers for just one tweet, but thanks to the huge exposure and the power of the celebrity tweets, it may be well worth it. It's unclear whether it will pay off for the advertisers but at least some people are convinced.
The startup has secured half a million dollars in seed funding from GRP Partners and it's now up to the company to prove that it can provide a sustainable model. In any case, it's hardly the first such service, Sponsored Tweets is doing pretty much the same thing and also has a focus on celebrity twitterers but there are a number of other services trying to get into the game.