Desktop Twitter users have seen “Promoted” tweets and “Promoted” Twitter accounts for quite some time. As stated February 28th in a blog post, the social media company will now expand advertising to mobile platforms starting with the Apple Inc. iPhone and Google Inc. Android devices. With no mention of expanding promotional tweets to iPad yet, you can expect to see them roll that out in the near future.
Twitter has started displaying promoted accounts already for iPhone and Twitter clients and will be publishing promoted tweets soon to a select number of users. Twitter has generally sold “promoted tweets” to large businesses since 2012. In February, they launched a similar service to allow small businesses to buy and place ads on Twitter.
Previously “promoted tweets” and “promoted trends” were only shown on the search page when viewing Twitter on mobile Android or iPhone apps. Now they will show up within a user’s timeline.
Twitter has stressed the ads will be relevant to each individual user to ensure relevancy. For example, if a user’s public tweet complaining about Nike is put out, then a promoted tweet about Adidas can be placed to capture their attention. This will provide a better ad experience for a user that is content driven by the user’s public data.
Unlike pop-up ads, which drive a general target market, the ads are based on topics the user is tweeting about. Twitter also will limit the number of ads a user sees daily and will likely only appear once within a timeline like any normal tweet.
Around 55% of Twitter’s 100 million monthly active users log in via mobile phone. This is helping advertisers reach potential markets via mobile services. Facebook has reported they have started testing advertising on their mobile app as well. Facebook receives 85% of its revenue from advertising on its website currently. The majority of Twitter’s revenue is through advertising as well with $139.5 million in ad sales in 2011, according to eMarketer. They reported advertising revenue is expected to grow 86.3% to $259.9 million this year.
Twitter has been valued at over $8 billion and has over 100 million active users. For Twitter to expand their services they will need to monetize their services. This is why they are providing mobile avenues for advertisers to reach their customers and enhance their services.
Is this something that you could utilize for your small business? Do you need help? Contact us at Eric Wagner, Online Marketing.
Image credits go to nokhoog_buchachon from freedigitalphotos.net
