As reported last month, Twitter finally rolls out its ad platform via promoted tweets. Brands, businesses, and non-profits are now allowed to target their promoted tweets but can only advertise to their followers. Promoted tweets will appear at the top of a user's timelineswhich they can dismiss after logging in and can scroll down afterwards. A promoted tweet will appear on users' timelines once, engagement on Promoted Tweets has already generated 3%-5% engagement which suggests that targeting is a crucial factor to increase such.
On its blog, Twitter named several partners that will kickstart this new offering. Among the brands are Best Western, Dell, Gatorade, Groupon, HBO, JetBlue, LivingSocial, Microsoft Xbox, Red Bull, Sephora, Starbucks, Summit Entertainment's "50/50", TNT and Virgin America. Non-profit organizations have taken part as well, expect to see promoted tweets from Make-A-Wish Foundation, Room to Read, The American Red Cross and Water.org if you follow them.
Twitter wants to gradually proliferate Promoted Tweets. It's only testing it with a meager of users so as not to saturate user timelines with seemingly conventional ads. While brands and businesses are already using Twitter to promote new products and services, Promotional Tweets will appear upon logging in even if it was tweeted at an earlier time. As mentioned earlier, Twitter doesn't want to saturate timelines with Promoted Tweets which is why if two or more advertisers are targeting the same Twitter account at the same time, Twitter says that it'll look at bid price and "relevance" to ascertain which Promoted Tweet will appear on top. Twitter has yet to detail how it will determine relevance, but they'll likely adhere on what an individual tweets about and what they retweet.
With Twitter slowly monetizing its services and a possible online payment system soon, it seems that it's not behind Google and Facebook from utilizing its userbase to acquire ROI. And you know what's more interesting? Twitter says Promoted Tweets will be visible to third-party applications soon. I used to think that your Twitter account is like your mobile phone number on the Web. Thing is, ads or salesperson don't interrupt you while you're on a call. Will users mind seeing Promoted Tweets upon logging in? Nevertheless, Twitter will monetize from this move.