Twitter Ads Triggered By Trademarked Keywords, Products

After reading articles like this recent one in NYT, I was left with the impression that Twitter's "Promoted Tweets" ads are triggered when people search for advertisers by their name. See this quote, for example:

"When people are searching on Starbucks, what we really want to show them is that something is happening at Starbucks right now, and Promoted Tweets will give us a chance to do that," said Chris Bruzzo, vice president of brand, content and online at Starbucks.

It turns out that the ads, much like Google AdWords, can be triggered by a bunch of other search terms, including product names or even third-party brands. I noticed that BestBuy's ads are live too (Starbucks's ads went on air earlier this week) and spent some time plugging different terms into the search box to see what will come up.

I am still trying to understand the logic that guides the display of the ads. It seems that there is a list against which the search terms are checked.  The search term (or a variation) needs to be present in the tweet itself, although not every word in a tweet will make it a "promoted" tweet. The list with the terms must be updated pretty often for the recently published tweets to show up as ads; either that, or the tweets must be scheduled in advance.





This tweet above becomes "promoted" when you search for hdtv, 3d tv, bestbuy, best buy, @bestbuy, 3d hdtv, 3d, but not, interestingly, by blue ray, blueray, electronics, tv, or bravia.

Searches for tri-color or Chickenfoot (a BestBuy concert) -- words that can be found in this and this tweets, respectively -- produced nothing.




Some trademarked terms trigger BestBuy's ads as well.  Search for iPad, and this tweet about iPad arrival comes up.  Search for Nook, and you get a Nook tweet-ad. Search for Bosch, though, and this tweet about Bosch appliances (published before the ad platform announcement) does not come up.

MediaPost yesterday wrote that this ad model could open a "PPC trademark can of worms."

More Details About Apple's iAd Platform

Not cheap, well targeted in a rather unique way, good looking, with room for improvement. A much more detailed account of our meeting with Apple's iAd team yesterday here.

North Korea Tours Info Pack

Followed a recent post on AdFreak to the site of KoryoGroup (cached) that offers tours to North Korea. The site is currently mostly down, but I got this pdf of their info pack. Lots of nuggets like "If you leave your camera on the bus etc the guides are a lot happier to give you more freedom."

Quote of the Week

"Apps are just (better) websites, because they don’t have to give a shit about SEO."

Remember when we used to have web pages that were for users, not spiders? f*cking keywords everywhere drives me bananas.

- A comment on Techcrunch

Movie Trailer in an Animated GIF

This GIF trailer was part of an email promo I got tonight from Pampers. Pretty eye-catching even if not exactly movie-quality. And pretty heavy, too, at 3.2MB.

Rethinking Calendars

AdLab's Rethink: series is about creative that is built around core and often unexpected properties of a particular medium. The first and the most popular post was about print, but I also really like  billboards that give, a road that plays music,  shopping bags that turn into kites, and interesting fishwrap.

Today, we continue the series with these wonderful promo calendars.




Calendars have what?  Leaves. Which makes it a perfect medium to promote a leaf blower. This calendar is rigged so that its leaves fall off automatically one each day and pile up on the floor; see for yourself in a video.




The thickness (or, rather, thinness) of paper has been explored by this knife brand before, in a print ad. This calendar with a slice of onion chopped off every day is a year-long reminder of the knives' sharpness.




The least obvious property of a calendar -- that the dates match up every 28 years -- was tapped into by Italy's League for the Environment to promote recycling.


The calendars below are interesting, too, although in a different way.




This idea is built not so much around the physical properties of the medium itself as a related saying "An apple a day keeps a doctor away". A calendar with 31 real apples in a tube, for a health insurance company.





A calendar in the shape of a photo lens promoting photog's services.




And a bizarre calendar with a leaf for each of the 7300+ days (that's 20 years) of warranty that a solar panel manufacturer gives its clients.

Twitter's First Ads Are Live

Just became a part of history by retweeting Twitter's first ad (for Starbucks). If you stay long enough on the search page, the sponsored tweets go in rotation; that is, the sponsored tweet is not necessarily the freshest one.

Nude Photographs for the Blind

Tactile Minds (around $200) includes 17 2-D tactile photographs created by Lisa J. Murph who "has photographed, sclupted, thermoformed, & self- published a book of nude photographs for the blind."

If the price is too steep, there's always the free nudie audio or the back issues of Playboy in Braille.

Optical Illusion: Disappearing Stain

This outdoor ad for a bleach is the most skillful implementation of an optical illusion I've seen in advertising - the stain disappears as you move closer to the poster.

Will You Love Ads Now?

Prescient (and rerun).