The Fearless Blogger

Today, Mashable implemented a new approach to social media advertising.

The social media site now features a Twitter Brand Sponsors module – a “widget” that syndicates the latest tweets from sponsoring brands (and one charity).

From Mashable’s announcement:

The Twitter Brand Sponsors module is our first trial of a new breed of engagement-based sponsorships. We like to call them sociable ads.

Social media is opening up a dialogue between brands and the web community. This is better for brands: it creates passionate, engaged customers who share their good experiences with the world. It’s better for the community, too: we get the opportunity to speak directly to the companies that create the products and services we use.

What about ads? Could they be more sociable as well?

My Two Cents

Personally I love this idea for non-obtrusively using Twitter as an advertising medium and revenue stream.

The most recent in a number of site improvements, the module is part of Mashable’s “Social Media Makeover” and speaks to the site’s goal to “reduce the number of ads on the site, but increase the relevance of those ads.”  Site founder Pete Cashmore shared in the comments:

Making sponsorships better and more engaging is a tough challenge: as I said when we launched the redesign, we want to reach a point where readers like our ads and engage with them…that way everyone wins.

Everyone Wins

“Everyone wins” is an apt statement.  The site’s redesign has prompted some innovative improvements by its partners – improvements that will soon be available to readers to implement on their own sites.

Yesterday, Mashable announced a partnership with popular commenting platform Disqus and new conversation tracker UberVU to bring its readers integrated Social Media Comments.  The new features will be available for all Disqus users once it enters general release.

Before that, a Mashable post inspired Dan Zarella to develop the popular TweetBacks and TweetSuite now used by many bloggers.  It’s worth noting that Dan is also the developer of the Twitter Brand Sponsors module (kudos to Dan for another successful innovation!).

Read more and share your comments at Twitter Brand Sponsors: Mashable’s New Sociable Ad Format.

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