Twitter Launches New Advertising Service

13. Apr, 2010 0 Comments

Twitter launched their first ad service today called Promoted Tweets. Twitter is starting with a few ad partners; Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America.

Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users. Visitors to Twitter.com will see Tweets promoted by Twitter partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results page.

Twitter’s Promoted Tweets attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate.

Promoted Tweets are labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand.

Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. This ad can be extremely effective, as only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.

Twitter has been operating since 2006 without any advertising revenue. We’re excited to see how this will grow their business, and how local businesses might be able to use this to their advantage.

- Tony Darrick Baker