So you’ve heard the big news then? Twitter is getting ready to roll out it’s brand new ad platform. This sounds like it should be fantastic news for us marketers on Twitter. Finally a self-serve platform that allows us to tap in to the rapidly growing Twittersphere. So why are we not excited?

The reality is that Twitter’s new ad platform is likely to fail, and those that do succeed will almost certainly be in the business of brand exposure rather than any kind of traffic arbitrage ROI. That sounds alright for some. But for most of us, this long awaited announcement is a huge disappointment. It looks as if third party tools such as Tweet Adder will remain the marketer’s choice for making money on Twitter. And here’s why.

The entire Twitter ad platform is to be based on keyword search terms.

“As we previously described, the new system serves up ads based on keywords in Twitter search queries.”

Sounds pretty sensible. If a user is searching for coffee (for whatever reason), maybe Starbucks can get away with promoting their new beverage. But what kind of percentage of Twitter users actively use search?

My own tweeting habits involve perusing through the updates of my friends, coming up with the odd smart arse status, and every once in a while checking the trending topics tab on the right. I rarely, if ever, bother to use Twitter search. And yet this is how the ads are to be displayed. You’re looking at only a tiny percentage of Twitter’s relative traffic actually being exposed to ads. It’s hardly a new dawn.

You can achieve the same results by automating a fake Twitter account with the help of Tweet Adder and bumping your message to the top of search lists. Considering that costs $0, why would you want to pay a ridiculously high CPM on Twitter’s self-serve ads platform?

The second, and perhaps more worrying, topic covered in the announcement raises up the dirty issue of a performance based quality score.

“A Promoted Tweet isn’t guaranteed to stay afloat for a long time — if the tweet isn’t tracking well in terms of replies, clicks, and a number of other metrics Twitter is calling “resonance”, it will be pulled, and the advertiser won’t pay for it.”

I just don’t quite understand the logic behind this. If an advertiser is paying by CPM, the performance shouldn’t matter. The last thing we want to be worrying about is some magic algorithm to determine how many clicks, replies and retweets we need to be receiving to keep our advertising campaign alive.

If an advertiser is paying by the click…fine. A quality score is necessary. But on a CPM basis, why Twitter would want to complicate a simple equation is beyond me. Particularly considering the advertisers likely to be using the service fall in to the “spreading brand awareness” target directive.

So as you can see, the Twitter Ad Platform is by no means the finished article. Only time will tell to see whether it makes these predictions look stupid. But for now, you’re probably better off sticking to your Tweet Adder.