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Inside Twitter's corporate offices, a #$$ hashtag may be trending. As part of its quest to increase ad dollars, Twitter ran its first TV ad during the June 10 Pocono 400, promoting the Twitter.com/#NASCAR hashtag page. NASCAR is Twitter's first ad client to have a landing page that aggregates content corresponding to a particular hashtag. Twitter has not yet officially offered this service to other brands yet.
In March, Twitter partnered with American Express to offer small businesses advertising opportunities, and it appears that Twitter is now going after big brands with the hashtag landing page feature.
Omid Ashtari, head of sports at Twitter, wrote on Twitter's blog that the #NASCAR page—which looks similar to existing hashtag searches, but features NASCAR's background image and a blend of curated content from NASCAR, its drivers and fans—helps fans discover the best tweets, photos and perspectives from the NASCAR universe, all in a single timeline. Twitter's own advertising blog has yet to comment on this newest development.
The #NASCAR page demonstrates perhaps the future of hashtags. Twitter has emerged a destination for users who wish to engage in real time with brands during events. Now, the company wants to help advertisers actually own the hashtag—and URL—where the conversation is happening.
The power of such a hashtag landing page is rooted in Twitter's ability to organize massive amounts of data around a single event. Apple's World Wide Developers Conference, set for June 11, will likely spawn millions of tweets about the company's latest offerings—and would be an ideal fit for this new page model.
Follow Bill Miltenberg: @bmiltenberg