Leading Operations Online

Twitter Opens Up to New Era

Has Twitter hopped on the Facebook train? Well, with the release of its own advertising API earlier this week, it may seem like it to some. The much-anticipated API program launched Tuesday to equal parts fanfare and fright. The program offers two APIs, one for promoted tweets and one for promoted accounts, and will offer advertisers a much more streamlined way to create and manage both small- and large-scaled Twitter campaigns, while integrating Twitter-based campaigns with those on other channels. And, more importantly, the APIs will offer up a feature notoriously missing from Twitter – analytics, and cross-platform analytics at that.

“This is just the start of our efforts that will give advertisers more choice,” said Twitter’s Revenue Product Manager (and fellow Texas alum) April Underwood on a recent Twitter blog post announcing the launch. “And, for our partners who are ad tool providers, the Ads API represents a new way for their expertise to meet the needs of their clients.” 

The new API is currently...

I have a natural inclination toward pessimism – it’s in my DNA, please don’t judge me. As I began to hear about viewable impressions, my mind started to crank out hypotheticals on how it would “really” work, as opposed to the utopian descriptions and overviews written in trade publications or presented in discussion panels by thought leaders. I understand the optimism people have preceding a new technological product rollout, but I also know that new isn’t always better.

My lens is that of a web publisher – I have experience as Senior Inventory Analyst and Senior Account Manager, which entails analyzing countless excel spreadsheets to optimize performance based on multiple data points. I look at CPMs, Impressions, and performance metrics all day long, and then I find trends in that data, and find ways to make campaigns or revenue opportunities perform better.

So here it is, my hypothetical and completely antagonistic viewpoint: I believe that, as a publisher, viewable impressions will not make your inventory more valuable. As an advertiser, it will not reduce costs or improve campaign performance. 

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