100-Product Innovation Using Twitter and Tweetups – Part 1

The last 10 years have witnessed a sea change in the advertising industry. Online advertising has taken over and has created new advertising leaders. These leaders of today are about to see another sea change, maybe even a greater one, over the next 10 years as new competing platforms mature.

Posted 4/30/09

Over the years we have gathered several thousand examples of product innovations. We have found patterns in the needs of customers and in the approaches that companies follow to develop product innovations to meet those needs. At the highest level, a customer has three basic needs, which create three major customer segments. First, there are physical needs related to the physical situation of the customer or of the location where the product is purchased or used. Second, there are emotional needs, which reflect the customer’s personal needs for comfort, status and the avoidance of anxiety. Finally, there are intellectual needs which segment customers based on their current knowledge and understanding of the company, its products and how the products are used.

To meet the needs of these customer segments, companies follow three primary pathways to product innovation. First, the company may reduce the resources the customer requires for the use of the product. These resources include money, time, effort and health. Second,  a company may improve the experience the customer has with the product. These experience-based innovations add new appeal to the senses, associate the company or the product with an image to increase the customer’s pleasure in using the product, increase the customer’s sense of security with the product or entertain the customer while he waits for or uses the product. Third, a company may provide the customer with information, which helps the customer to recognize and recall the name of the company and its products, to explain the product’s relative benefits or to obtain directions on how the product should operate within a broader customer cost system.

Kraft has demonstrated some of these patterns in its recent DiGiorno flatbed pizza introduction. In one of its most innovative approaches to this introduction, the company is seeking out influential users of Twitter. Twitter is the social online media company that allows users to communicate quickly using very short140-character messages. For influential users of Twitter, Kraft is offering to host Tweetups. Tweetups are in-person get-togethers prearranged on Twitter. The company is recruiting these Twitter users, called Tweeters, in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. The company is offering to provide DiGiorno flatbed pizzas to these Tweetup events in the hope that attendees will like the product and spread the word.

In the second part of this blog, we will tie these product innovations back to the customer need segments and types of product innovations we have outlined above.

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Update 2022:

By 2019, Twitter had become a powerful platform to increase a business’ online reach.  The average Twitter user followed 5 businesses and 80% of all Twitter users have mentioned a brand in a Tweet.  Twitter had 436 million daily worldwide active users generating $3.2 billion in advertising revenue in the US alone.  Roughly 50% of marketers used Twitter in their marketing programs.

In 2020 a market research company claimed these were the best places to advertise online, in order: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter.

Effective advertising increases the Reliability and Convenience for the customer of the company’s product. See HERE and HERE for more perspective on these aspects of the Customer Buying Hierarchy.

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Update 7/26

The New Shape of Advertising

Online advertising has taken over the advertising industry. In 2026 it controls about 70% of the total advertising spend. Clear winners and losers have appeared.

Over the last several years, the online advertising world has gone through a major transformation. What used to be a relatively stable landscape dominated by search and social media has fractured into a more complex ecosystem shaped by retail media, short‑ and long-form video, machine‑learning performance optimization, and new forms of product discovery.

As these developments have taken place, platforms have distinguished themselves to their advertising purchasing customers largely based on distinct Function differences. These differences include the ability to target consumers with a clear intent to buy, the improvement of performance and its measurements, the provision of educational advertising and the targeting of specific niche consumers native to a platform.

Some platforms have surged. Others have stalled. A few have declined sharply. Underneath these shifts are deeper forces: changes in how people shop, how they consume media, how algorithms work, and how advertisers measure results. Together, these forces have reshaped the market and redistributed billions of dollars in advertising spend.

Let’s start with estimates of the top market shares of the top platforms in the global online advertising market. Rough shares in 2026:

– Meta (including Facebook and Instagram) leads with a 27% market share.

– Google follows closely at 26%

– Amazon is third with 9% market share

– ByteDance (including TikTok and Douyin in China) with 8% market share

– Bing (including LinkedIn) about 2% share

It is worth noting that the Chinese platforms are drastically underrepresented since their statistics are not available.

These shares have changed over the years so we will review those platforms gaining and losing share and the reasons for the share changes.

Platforms win on unique Functions

We begin with those platforms gaining share:

Meta has become the overall industry leader, recently overtaking Google. It has transformed itself into a pure play advertising platform. Its advantage over all other competitors comes a down to scale, precision targeting, and a broad product line hard for any single rival to match. Meta also leads the industry in performance measurement. These are all Function advantages. With their singular management focus on advertising excellence, they look like the leader for the next few years.

Amazon is the single biggest share gainer over the last five years. It owns purchase data that is the most valuable signal in advertising. It has the advantage of closed loop performance measurement, which ties an ad to a specific purchase. This is a unique Function advantage. As it gains experience, it is likely to increase its market share further in the future.

TikTok, part of ByteDance, gains share with its short form videos and engaged youth- oriented users. Again, Function advantages for advertisers.

Bing, while small in absolute terms, consistently gains share with its Copilot integration and default-placement leverage through the Windows eco system. These are Function and Conveinience advantages that Microsoft pairs with a CPC price 33% lower than Google, a Price advantage.

The biggest change in online advertising has been the rise of retail media networks — advertising systems built on top of e‑commerce platforms. Amazon is the clear leader, but Walmart, Target, Instacart, and other retailers have followed. Retail media is now the fastest‑growing category in digital advertising, and its rise is structural — not temporary.

Retail media grew because it offers something no other platform can match: purchase data. Advertisers can see not only whether someone clicked an ad, but whether they bought the product. This “closed‑loop attribution” is incredibly powerful for marketers.

As a result, Amazon’s ad business has exploded. Sponsored product ads have become a default cost of doing business for marketplace sellers, and Amazon now captures roughly 9% of all digital ad spending. This growth has pulled budget away from Google’s search ads, Meta’s performance ads, and Pinterest’s shopping inspiration.

Platforms lose on slower growth, limited scale and Reliability failure

We continue with those platforms losing market share:

Google is losing share as other platforms simply grow faster than it does.  Google has the advantage of many successful businesses but these take away from the kind of management focus that Facebook relies on. Apple faces a similar share loss because it is just beginning to build out its advertising offerings.

Pinterest, while gaining share in limited Function home, weddings and decor categories, loses share as the much larger, broader-based, advertising platforms grow faster. The same drawback impedes Google’s LinkedIn share growth.

Twitter/X has been the major share loser as advertisers lack  confidence in its content moderation. Advertisers see too many risks for their branded ad on Twitter/X  to appear next to controversial content, a significant Reliability failure.

The future will see new leaders emerge

The next five years or so will see new leaders emerge, especially AI platforms.  We mentioned already that Apple is just gearing up to compete heartily in the online advertising market.  It will inevitably become a major player because it dominates its iOS ecosystem. But the future big dogs in online advertising should be the AI platforms.

The AI platforms should revolutionize online advertising. In 2026, the large AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini do not participate in the online ad business. They do not sell ads, run sponsored placements, operate ad auctions or monetize their enormous potential in advertising. As chatbots replace traditional search, they will change how people discover products, research purchases and buy products. They have natural advantages in capturing consumer intent to purchase (a Function advantage for the advertiser), in researching performance and product quality ratings ( Function and Reliability advantages for the consumer) and in offering one click purchase opportunities (a Convenience advantage for the consumer). They should become advertising juggernauts.

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