Costolo Promotion Latest Sign Twitter Is Out of the Ad Closet
When I heard that Dick Costolo had been promoted to CEO of Twitter the other day, it was one of those "It's about time" moments. It seemed like a grand finale, something that tied all the pieces together, since he's obviously viewed as the business brains behind the operation. "A grand finale to what?" you ask. Twitter's coming-out party to the advertisers that will turn it from tech darling into -- the company hopes -- media giant.
While this week was the one with the big Costolo announcement, last week was when Twitter really started introducing itself to the advertising community. Although it announced its "Promoted Tweets" ad program back in April, Twitter had still been more or less in stealth mode, piloting the ad program with 30 advertisers. Further, even after Promoted Tweets launched, few of us -- even in the industry -- actually saw these paid tweets, which, like ads on Google, are built around keywords. The reason? They are attached to Twitter search, so unless you're spending a lot of time there you're not going to see it.
But when Advertising Week in Manhattan dawned last week, Twitter came with a story to tell. A company that had barely been a presence at advertising events, and had infrequently talked to the ad press, was suddenly everywhere. Stories about the early success of Promoted Tweets were placed on the first day of Ad Week in both Ad Age and The Wall Street Journal. The company then made the rounds of the various conferences that are part of the Advertising Week maelstrom.
Costolo, then merely the COO, did a one-on-one interview with Ad Age editor-in-chief Abbey Klaassen at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX Conference; founder and (now former) CEO Ev Williams sat on a panel with people like NBC Universal's Lauren Zalaznick, the brains behind Bravo's Real Housewives series, and Trevor Kaufman, CEO of the hot digital agency Schematic. (Williams was probably the quietest of the lot.) Hell, even I was pulled into it, moderating a panel at Mediapost's OMMA Global that featured Coke and Verizon Wireless, two marketers that have used the Promoted Tweets platform.
In the many years I've been writing about the not always comfortable intersection between the East Coast-based ad business and the West Coast-based technology business, seldom, if ever, have I seen a tech company go from being in the closet -- from the perspective of the advertising community -- to being out of the closet quite so quickly. It's a familiar dance to those of us who know that eventually, these companies have to migrate east to where the ad dollars are, but usually it plays out much more slowly.
Which isn't to say that the people at Twitter are panting all over the ad community. They are still, wisely, taking the actual implementation of ad platforms slowly. Instead, even if they don't seem like they will ever be a particularly hard-sell company, what last week told the advertising community is how serious they are about making the relationship work. There have been key hires in recent months too -- such as Adam Bain as head of revenue -- but naming Costolo as CEO was the final signal, to those who would do business with Twitter, that it's time to get serious.
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