Twitter on ups its Sponsored Tweets with Promoted Trends

Peter Kafka at Media Memo is out with the exclusive news today that Twitter is looking at expanding its Sponsored Tweets ad platform with a new idea called Promoted Trends. The idea here is that advertisers can insert their own terms into the list of trends that Twitter displays on our Twitter homepages, as well on its own login page.

Word is that advertisers can expect to pay tens of thousands of dollars for this prime placement and would see people clicking on those paid for trend items switching over to a Twitter search result page which would then display that advertiser’s “promoted tweet”. From Peter Kafka’s post:

But the basic gist seems to be this: Advertisers will be able to insert their own terms into the list of trends Twitter displays on users’ homepages (see image below; click to enlarge) and on its login page. Clicking on a term would call up a Twitter search results page, which would feature the associated advertiser’s “promoted tweet” at the top of the results.

Advertisers who have heard Twitter talk about the product say the service imagines charging “tens of thousands of dollars” a day for exclusive placement rights.

If Twitter moves forward with the plan, it’s going to need to iron out some details: For instance, will every one of Twitter’s 190 million users see the same promoted trend? Or will the service figure out how to filter them?

Just as important: Can Twitter ensure that its trending topics aren’t cluttered with spam?

I’m sorry but there is something about this that just rubs me the wrong way. Slowly more and more of Twitter is becoming the playground for advertisers and marketers, and I’m not talking about the incredible number of questionable accounts slamming us daily. This is much more insidious in my opinion as it is going to make it harder to tels what part of Twitter is ads and which part is actually of any value.