Twitter Reveals Advertising Model: Promoted Tweets

Users and companies have been speculating how exactly Twitter would monetize. Well kids, the wait is over.

Later today Twitter is set to show off its new advertising program called Promoted Tweets.

These tweets will show up when users are searching for keywords that advertisers have purchased to link to their ads. Integrating the promoted tweets into the conversation stream is still a ways down the road.

“When a Twitter user searches for a word an advertiser bought, the promoted message will show up at the top of the results, even if it was written much earlier. The posts say they are promoted by the company in small type, and when someone rolls over a promoted post with a cursor, it turns yellow.”

Twitter will also be measuring ‘resonance’ based on 9 factors which will help advertisers determine if the promoted tweets are engaging.

“At first, companies will pay per thousand people who see promoted posts. Once Twitter figures out how people interact with the posts, it will figure out alternate ways to charge advertisers.”

We can imagine a situation where a blogger works with a brand like JCrew to tweet about an upcoming sale. JCrew pays for ad placement – the tweet gets promoted to the top – and now anyone searching for JCrew would first see the sale tweet.

If Twitter allows for advertisers to drill down by location it could be even more powerful.

{source: New York Times}