Ad.ly vs. Sponsored Tweets: Twitter Advertising Showdown

You want to make money from Twitter. You joined all 12 networks mentioned in this blog post and see that you’ll get the highest paying offers from Ad.ly or Sponsored Tweets. Here’s a comparison and my recommendation on which one you should use.

Both sites insist on disclaimers in each advertising tweet. Each Ad.ly tweet will usually have a “(Ad)”, while the disclaimer from Sponsored Tweets are customizable, with tags like “#spon”, “ad” or “sponsored”.  This is the same for the tweet too, where Sponsored Tweets will allow you to customize the message (allowing it to be approved by the advertiser) that are tweeted. Yes, some people disagree to tweeting ads, but

You can cash out to PayPal when you reach $50 on both networks, but only Ad.ly offers a cheque option.

Ad.ly – So far I’ve made $152
Ad.ly is the latest Twitter Advertising network, having just launched on the 22nd of September. Similar to Sponsored Tweets below, this service mostly caters to high end advertisers (my two advertisers were Microsoft and NBC) wanting to connect with medium to high-end Twitter users. In fact, founder and CEO Sean Rad says that he wants Ad.ly to be the Federated Media for Twitter. They have an impressive list of high-profile celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, Brooke Burke, Nicole Richie, Brody Jenner, Dr. Drew and Samantha Ronson. ad.ly also allows you to donate a portion of your earnings to a charity of your choice. Their launch party video is shown below:

Sponsored Tweets – So far I’ve made $315.18
Sponsored Tweets is IZEA’s brand new advertising network. IZEA is a social media marketing company and the world leader in sponsored conversations. IZEA operates a network of over 250000 bloggers and 25000 advertisers. Izea has numerous sponsored advertising networks prior to SponsoredTweets, including PayPerPost and SocialSpark. This being said, SponsoredTweets is geared more towards Web Celebrities like John Chow and Shoemoney, although smaller tweeters will still get opportunities.

Yes. I’ve made more from Sponsored Tweets than Ad.ly. But Ad.ly is a newer network, without the backing of a parent advertising company with an expertise in Internet Marketing (yet).

Here’s the conclusion. Sign up for both Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets. But look out for Ad.ly, which are backed by large advertisers like Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, NBC, Nestle and Microsoft. A bigger company will usually mean a bigger advertising budget, and thus more offers available to you. For example, my advertisers are NBC and Microsoft. Ad.ly also has these “limited time” offers, where you’ll have to accept the ad within 24 hours. Check your email often! 🙂

Sign Up for Ad.ly

Sign Up for Sponsored Tweets

To Your Success,
Josh Lam

Have you made anything from Ad.ly or Sponsored Tweets? Which one do you prefer? Comment below.