Pay per Tweet – Izea’s Pioneer Program for Sponsored Tweets

Brian Morrissey’s “Get Ready for Pay per Tweet” article posted on Ad Week’s site yesterday shedding light on a new Sponsored Tweets program by Izea.

Izea, the company formerly called Pay Per Post that had launched a controversial pay-for-play marketing program with bloggers, will now focus on Sponsored Tweets. This program is set to launch in about a month and pay Twitterers for their help spreading the good word…er, or marketing jargon (not that there’s anything wrong with that, interjects PR girl). The company has apparently learned from its non-disclosure mistakes of the past, with a new name and new standards. Izea will require full disclosure for micro-bloggers endorsing products for payment to adhere to the Federal Trade Commission revised guidelines.

In one of its fledgling Twitter sponsorship programs, Izea worked with Blockbuster for its online rental service – see article Blockbuster is currently offering bloggers 68 cents per click in a promotion. The Twitter posts included a “#spon” hash-tag in the message for this promotion and the same system will be used for the upcoming Sponsored Tweet Program.  

This Sponsored Tweets article comes on the heels of Knowledge Networks’ poll results revealing that less than 5% of social-media users (ages 13-54) regularly turn to these sites for information and guidance on purchase decisions. 

Do you think this program has legs… or wings? Or, do you think that it will alienate Twitter users?

 Posted by: Katie | follow me on Twitter