[sferik]

What you are describing is direct response advertising.

There is another type of advertising called branding. Budweiser doesn’t spend $25 million per year advertising during the Super Bowl because they expect you to see the advertisement and immediately order a beer at the bar. Instead, Budweiser is trying to tell you a story about their brand to evoke an emotional response that will be stored deep in your amygdala such that every time you go to buy beer in the future you will reflexively choose Budweiser.

Google is better for direct response advertising; Twitter is better for branding.

PS: There is more money in brand advertising.

[bolder88]

I don't buy that. On the web, there is far more money in direct response advertising. Branding is far more prominent in old media.

[sferik]

Yes, that's the point. As people spend more of their time and attention on social media relative to other media, where will those branding budgets go? Not to Google (well, actually, that's why they bought YouTube...but not to Google Search).

Twitter is one of the few outlets where brands can effectively communicate their message online. That's the theory, anyway. You can argue that Twitter is a bad medium for branding but arguing that it's a bad medium for direct response advertising is missing the point.

[taproot]

Watch out guys Twitter is doing something different.

On the web there is far more money in direct response right now because that's the easiest to measure and we have the platforms well ingrained in all our systems.

To say that brand based advertising isn't required or has no place is contrary to everything we know about advertising. You don't see the coke logo 50 times a day for nothing.