Maybe they don't want to get into the targeted advertising market and see themselves more as general advertising? That said, you still don't see ads for women's lingerie during the World Series and you don't see many beer ads during Dancing with the Stars. There's a balance and I don't think twitter has it figured out yet.
As Marco points out, though, the #dickbar makes even less sense than running ads for women's lingerie during the World Series. The #dickbar is the equivalent of some guy standing behind home plate and holding up a sign that says #THONGS.
Methinks the first rule of running general advertising is to run advertising. Otherwise you are injecting noise for no reason. At least advertising is defensible noise ("hey, you want your free client, you gotta pay the piper") and it has a fighting chance of not actually being noise (some baseball fans do buy lingerie).
>Maybe they don't want to get into the targeted advertising market and see themselves more as general advertising?
Then I think they completely missed the boat.
The whole conceit of twitter is _you decide_ who to follow. They don't even start you out with a Myspace-esque Tom. Every user's timeline is unique.
So, if I'm following Roger Ebert, Kevin Smith, and Netflix, don't you think I would be receptive to DVD advertisements? Similarly, if I'm following Pogue, Mossberg, and Gruber, wouldn't I be receptive to iPhone app ads?