Deep Focus CEO and avid Twitter user Ian Schafer is, as an experiment, auctioning off sponsorship of his Twitter profile and feed. The sponsorship will consist of a branded background image and the replacement of his icon with an image of the brand’s choice.
Shafer has set the starting bid at $400. Let’s do some math. $400 for one month. Schafer has 377 followers. He tweets 8-10 times per day. If we assume those days to be weekdays, that’s about 200 tweets per month (10 tweets X 20 days). Using old-school metrics, the sponsorship will deliver 3,770 impression per day or 75,400 per month. Matching that to the $400 cost nets a CPM of $5.31.
If you view this as a B to B buy, that’s not so bad. Otherwise, it’s a bit high and higher if the bid actually goes anywhere. Math aside, I applaud the experimental effort. If anything, Evan Williams over at Twitter will wake up one day and scream, “Damn, we need a revenue stream! Get that Schafer dude on the phone right now!”
