Twitter's wasting no time in monetizing their new 'Moments' feature. In a new blog post today, the network has announced that they're testing their first 'Promoted Moments' this weekend, with the upcoming movie 'Creed' to be the first ad content featured.
From the post:
"Two weeks ago, Moments launched as a new experience that brings the best of Twitter front and center. There have already been some incredible stories told through this new format. We're seeing how powerful this experience can be for diving into meaningful narratives - and since Twitter's inception, brands have told some of the very best stories on the platform."
Through Promoted Moments, Twitter will hand over control of that 'Moment' for 24 hours, enabling the brand to curate tweets, as well as Vine and Periscope content, into a dedicated Moments stream. The sponsored story will appear like any other in the Moments listing - though as you can see in the above screenshot, there'll be a 'Promoted' indicator on both the main screen and within the Moment flow itself.
Matt Derella, Twitter's VP of Revenue for North America, told Bloomberg that Twitter's expecting to have one Promoted Moment every day, each of which will be given prominent placement in the app.
"Promoted Moments will have all the features of a Moment you see right now, and instead of curators creating the moment, it'll be a brand."
Moments is Twitter's latest effort to awaken user growth, this time by highlighting one of the platforms key strengths - being a key source for breaking news and evolving events. Based on a raft of feedback suggesting that the platform is difficult to understand for new users, Moments was developed to be a sort of easy introduction for those unfamiliar with its workings, with a selection of news stories and events being covered each day in the Moments tab, curated by a team of editors to ensure only the best, most relevant content from across the Twitter eco-sphere is showcased. Moments also removes the restriction of Twitter's fast-moving, reverse chronological timeline, which, again, is aimed at simplifying the user experience.
The focus on news content is a smart move - a recent study by GlobalWebIndex showed that Twitter is most widely used as a news service, with 41% of users having read a news story on the platform in the last 30 days, and 35% logging in to 'see what's happening without posting/commentating'.
(Chart via GlobalWebIndex)
Twitter's been under an increasing amount of pressure over growth, despite revenue results coming in above analyst expectations in the last quarter. Twitter will announce their third quarter earnings early next week.