Ad.ly, is a brand new advertising network only very recently launched that inserts ads once a day on your twitter account. The ad network seeks your approval first so you would basically be “indirectly” tweeting the ad. Its almost as if you’d be “endorsing by approving” their ad. Interesting…
This sort of control is great to have on advertising right? As the publisher so you’re technically deciding very directly what your followers see. This is great in comparison to something like Adsense where the ads are more based on bids than on the content and much less approved by you (what control you do have is choosing who you DON’T want to advertise!).
This could be counted as a win-win for both the advertisers and the users on twitter. On the one hand, ad.ly “enables advertisers to reach the highly sought after Twitter audience by connecting brands with the most influential people in the community”. And on the other hand, the publisher gets to choose which ads they think their followers might actually benefit from! It’s like an affiliate marketing and advertising hybrid!
When you sign up as a publisher you can actually set your required weekly price from the advertiser, which is another great level of control. That being said I would probably go with the recommended amount or a little less, to get maximum benefit from it. It’d be a shame to lose out on advertisers because you set your price too high right!?
On a side note, you can actually donate a part or all of your earnings to a charity of your choice. Excellent! I hope that someone like Bono will use their sea of followers to feed the hungry instead of simply adding to their millions…
Over all ad.ly seems like an excellent addition to the world of Twitter. Who wants to start a bet that Google will buy it!?
By the way, ad.ly is currently holding a competition for who can get the most users to sign up using a custom referral link. The winner gets a Macbook Pro!
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@darrensingleton
I have been a member of ad.ly for a while now and have not yet had any offers, whereas I have actually completed two offers on SponsoredTweets.com in the last two months.
You mentioned ad.ly’s referral contest but never actually used your referral link in the post. Perhaps if people would like to sign up, they would do so using mine?
(Edit: Nope, sorry – if Darren has one and wants to add it to the post, I’ll do that. It’s his site. Otherwise, no referral links please… – Lara)
@ramanujam
Wondering why Darren hasn’t added his ad.ly referral link in the post (I know it is a guest post!). Now that ad.ly is paying a massive 12% referral money this is one nicely missed opportunity leaving money on the table!
@prolificliving
Sounds almost too good to be true considering the control freaks of advertising world. I am going to give it a try. I do wonder how it will change the aesthetics of the page and tweets etc.
@howbloggerearn
But, is not that how you advertise your tweets on Twitter ? I am just wondering, how it is different from any other Twitter advertising except the apple MacBook.
@kylemaxwell
No way. Twitter has too much value as a conversation, and this just expands upon the evils that Twitterfeed has already foisted upon us.
@triathlontips
WOW!! Can’t believe my post got published, sweet!
I did actually have my affiliate link it but they took it off. Its only fair I guess
Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. Keep up the good work everyone!
@mikestenger
Ad.ly has some really great things going for it. The only problem that I see really coming up in the near future is all the people signed up with the program who are just about the dollars. Being about the dollars is great, trust me, but promoting just any offer that comes your way can impact your brand and what you do in a negative way.
The great thing is that those who recognize that can pick and choose what they want to tweet out.
@bryceroney
I’ve signed up — let’s see what happens.
@terriebittner
I remove people who insert advertising into their tweets. I expect to see ads on websites–there are many costs involved and it’s how I “pay” for using the site. Howeverm it costs you nothing to use Twitter, so why should I be forced to have ads on my twitter feeds so you can make money? If I got paid to read them, perhaps, but otherwise, I gain nothing by having them take up space on my feed. I wonder what the follower cost will be as people’s feeds get tangled up in ads? Promoting your own site, yes. That’s probably why I followed you. Otherwise, no.
@Davidspinks
Uh, did we completely forget the whole issue over sponsored tweets?
The issue is disclosure. If you have an arrangement where your content is being paid for, you have to disclose that arrangement. It’s now the law, not just a moral standard.
Ad.ly does not seem to enforce disclosure.
That’s a problem.
David
Community Manager, Scribnia.com
This is Sean Rad, CEO of Ad.ly. Thank you all for the feedback. At Ad.ly, we believe that twitterers produce valuable content and that they should be compensated for doing so. For advertisers, we’re launching our self serve solution soon which will add a lot of fuel to the fire. The publishers here who haven’t gotten offers will get some soon… stay tuned and we look forward to working with all of you.
I remove those person who show the ad.ly ads..
@mbryant5645
Ok, I signed up. So what exactly does it do?